CENTRE WELLINGTON – Thirty thousand dollars is sitting in the bank, just waiting for someone to pull the ace of spades and take home the jackpot.
But the winner – and all the other hope-to-be winners – will have to wait a bit longer for Catch the Ace to start up again.
Jim Gibbons has chaired the initiative since it started three years ago. Two jackpots were won and then the game abruptly came to a halt when the pandemic began.
But it was going long enough for Gibbons to see it was very popular with the public, a lucrative fundraiser for the organizers on behalf of Groves Memorial Community Hospital, and he’s keen to get it going again.
Catch the Ace is a joint project of the Fergus Legion Branch 275 and the Rotary Club of Fergus-Elora.
It’s a progressive lottery, meaning tickets are sold and bought for a weekly draw with the aim – if you’re lucky – of winning the larger jackpot.
When it started, tickets were sold at the Legion and volunteers set up booths outside of grocery stores and other locales. There were weekly draws and the winner received half of the week’s sales. The hospital received the other half.
Sales were brisk, Gibbons said, and the weekly win was sometimes as much as $5,000.
But before the game began, 52 playing cards were put in individual sealed envelopes and the weekly winner got to pull an envelope too.
Whoever pulls the ace of spades wins the jackpot, that right now is sitting at $30,000.
Gibbons wants people to know the game will start up again as soon as it’s safe for volunteers to handle money and sit outside selling tickets.
“I want people to know the $30,000 jackpot is still protected. We have to hold off selling tickets a while longer until it’s safe,” he said.
“I think we ran it for 26 weeks before the pandemic, then we had to shut it down.”
Gibbons, who is a Rotarian, said the club pledged to raise $500,000 for Groves Memorial Community Hospital and it is about $33,000 from the goal.
