Claudine Villiard

Lottery Winner Doubly Thankful for Ottawa Hospital

Just 10 days before winning the grand prize in The 2006 Ottawa Hospital Lottery, Claudine Villiard suddenly became a patient there, rushed to the Hospital’s General Campus emergency department one night with severe abdominal pain. Doctors checked her out, and she went home with a clean bill of health.

“They were very good, very good. So nice,” she recalls.

Claudine was about to like the Hospital even more. On May 31, she received a phone call that changed her life: she’d won a $ 1.2 million furnished home.

Claudine and her husband Jean-Claude, a university professor, purchased two tickets for this year’s Lottery. Unbeknownst to him, Villiard then bought a third. And that, as they say, was the ticket.

“That house was ‘calling’ us. And it’s for a good cause, so why not?” she says.

In fact, one of the projects that will benefit from this year’s Lottery earnings is the new Critical Care Wing under construction at the General Campus, not far from where Claudine received her treatment. Once complete, it will include state-of-the-art operating rooms, and 32 new Intensive Care Unit beds.

Claudine says she somehow instinctively knew she would win, saying that when she and her husband first saw pictures of the house in the paper, “My name was on it. Everyday I thought about this house for the last four months. It was an obsession.”

Claudine says she, her husband and 16-year-old son can’t wait to move into the 4,500-square-foot Manotick estate, complete with elevator, hot tub, and private wine cellar.