It was an exciting morning at Bray Motors Thursday after staff at the car dealership in Sundridge realized their lottery pool had won them half of the $45 million Lotto 6/49 jackpot from Wednesday night’s draw.

“We won $22,572,856,” said John Davis, a sales rep at the dealership and councillor for the Town of Huntsville. That translates into roughly $903,000 for each of the 25 employees.

Clarence Hummel is another sales representative at the dealership, who collects money from the 25 employees whenever a lottery jackpot gets big, and was the one who checked the tickets Thursday morning.

For the past 14 years staff at the dealership have been purchasing group tickets on big jackpot nights.

“I think the biggest win (before today) was around $83,” said Hummel.

Sounds of chatter and laughter could be heard throughout the dealership as a planned barbecue for Friday was pushed up and staff spent the afternoon talking and laughing about their good fortune.

Davis said they have registered as the winners with the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, but have not decided when or how they will go to Toronto to collect the winnings.

The jackpot was split with a ticket bought in Quebec that has not yet been registered.

“If we rented a bus and all of us went (to collect the winnings) it would be a hoot,” he said.

Check out next week’s Huntsville Forester and Almaguin News for more on this story.