Chase the Ace winner Donelda MacAskill in no hurry to spend money

The Cape Breton woman who won $1.7 million last week in the wildly popular Chase the Ace fundraiser lottery in Inverness says she's been too busy to give any serious thought to how she'll spend the money.

Donelda MacAskill, of Englishtown, said she attended scheduled meetings and a conference in Halifax in the days after the draw last Saturday, leaving her little time to consider how her life might change.

She said, though, there have been moments when the reality of the size of her win brought her up short.

"[There's] a piece of property we talked about for years. It's been for sale and it's been coming down in price," she said Friday. "All of a sudden it dawned on me. 'God, I could buy that; I have money.'"

Now that she can afford it though, MacAskill has decided not to buy the land.

"What would we do with it?" she joked.

'I love seeing people'

Chase the Ace is something like a 50-50 draw. But instead of winning half the value of the ticket sales, the winning ticket holder receives a smaller cut of the take and a chance to draw the ace of spades from a deck of regular playing cards to win the jackpot.

Every Saturday, half of the money raised goes to the organization behind the draw, 20 per cent to the weekly winner and 30 per cent funnelled into the big prize. The jackpot builds until someone does draw the ace of spades.

That was MacAskill, who won $1,771,256.76 on the evening of Oct. 3.

That night, she said the only thing she really wanted to buy was a tractor for her husband so he can clear snow more easily from their property. That's still in the cards, but she said nothing else readily springs to mind to spend the money on.

She still hasn't cashed the cheque.

The 62-year-old woman said she plans to keep operating her seasonal business, Donelda's Puffin Boat Tours, because she loves what she does.

"I love seeing people from all over the world. Every day we go out there, every trip we go out there is different and I'm going to continue doing what I love doing," she said.

'Biggest enjoyment' is seeing her sons happy

Her husband, a fisherman who is recovering from cancer treatment, also plans to keep working.

"I'll be fishing with him as long as he's fishing," she said.

MacAskill said her three sons are "adamant" that she and her husband spend the money on themselves, retire and take it easy.

"As I've told them, the biggest enjoyment we can get is seeing that they're happy," she said. "If they're happy in their lives and they have what's going to make their lives easier, then that's certainly going to make their father and I extremely happy."

The proceeds from Chase the Ace in Inverness are going to the Inverness Cottage Workshop, a charity for people with disabilities, and the Inverness chapter of the Royal Canadian Legion.

The legion needs to add up the expenses of running the contest for 48 weeks including the cost of the venues and extra security before determining how much money it and the Inverness Cottage Workshop will get.

Officials at the legion have estimated the two organizations will split an amount roughly the same size as MacAskill's big prize.