Family wins $50 million just before Christmas, and now plans to buy a farm

Dec 26, 2023

What’s the best way to celebrate Christmas? By winning $50,000,000, of course.

A family from Quebec’s Laurentians region snagged the golden ticket for the Lotto Max jackpot in the Dec. 15 draw.

Nancy Gauthier, her mother Jeannette Boisvert and her mother’s partner Gilles Larouche are the lucky winners.

“I swear I was shaking,” Gauthier said of the surreal moment when she learned they were multi-millionaires.

Gauthier bought the ticket at her mother’s urging and when she went to check the results online, only to discover six of their numbers matched those in the draw.

She looked down at the seventh final number and then back at the website. That’s when Gauthier fell to her knees and screamed. Her mother was beside her when Gauthier said “I got them all.”

“It was insane,” Gauthier said Thursday during a Loto-Québec news conference, adding her mom made her check the numbers over several times.

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Larouche was woken up by the excited screams and he thought someone had broken into their home. That’s when he learned his life was about to change.

“She (Gauthier) told me we won it all,” he said.

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Video: Understanding the Basics of the Renewable Fuel Standard

On Friday, April 24, 2026, from 12 noon–1:00 ET, the Penn State Center for Agricultural and Shale Law, alongside the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s (PDA) Agricultural Business Development Center (ABDC), presented this webinar in the Understanding Agricultural Law Educational Series, a course designed to develop subject matter literacy and competence on fundamental issues of agricultural law for attorneys and business advisors who work with or represent agricultural or rural clients but may not necessarily specialize in agricultural law:

“Understanding the Basics of the Renewable Fuel Standard”

The Clean Air Act’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program requires transportation fuel sold in the United States to contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels such as ethanol, biodiesel, or advanced biofuels. Established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and later expanded by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the RFS is implemented by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in collaboration with the Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

This webinar provides an overview of the legal authority and structure for the RFS program and explain how it works, including the program’s system of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) and categories of renewable fuels. Additionally, this webinar addresses EPA annual volume requirement rulemaking and associated recent legal issues.