Marcel Leclaire Three Lottery Wins frames a rare sequence: a 73-year-old retired Sudbury taxi driver who won $1 million in 2017, $3 million in 2025 and a $88, 888 top prize playing Instant Lunar 8s most recently. The comparison asks one question: how do the scale, reaction and intended use of the $88, 888 prize align with his two earlier multimillion-dollar wins?
Marcel Leclaire Three Lottery Wins: Instant Lunar 8s and the $88, 888 top prize
Instant Lunar 8s delivered a top prize of $88, 888 to Marcel Leclaire, who is 73 and has played lottery games with OLG for more than 40 years. The ticket cost $5 a play, and the game lists odds of winning any prize at 1 in 3. 61. Leclaire checked the ticket at the store and said he stood in “complete shock” when he discovered the win; he then went to the OLG Prize Centre in Toronto to collect the money.
2017 Encore and 2025 Instant Platinum: earlier $1 million and $3 million results
Leclaire’s earlier wins were a $1 million prize in 2017 playing Encore and a $3 million prize in 2025 playing Instant Platinum. Both outcomes are larger in nominal value than the Instant Lunar 8s result. He described the third win as “just as intense as the first, ” and shared the Instant Lunar 8s news with his brother while at the store. The smaller dollar amount of the recent top prize contrasts with the round-million sums he collected in 2017 and 2025.
| Year | Game | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Encore | $1 million |
| 2025 | Instant Platinum | $3 million |
| (most recent) | Instant Lunar 8s | $88, 888 |
Sudbury, Donovan Variety and Toronto: where the wins align and diverge
All three wins share a few concrete ties: Leclaire is a retired Sudbury taxi driver who purchased the most recent winning ticket at Donovan Variety on Kathleen Street in Sudbury and has been a player for decades. Emotionally, the wins align—he reported that even the third big win felt as intense as the first. Financially and functionally, they diverge: the 2017 and 2025 prizes are in seven figures, while the Instant Lunar 8s top prize is a five-figure payout and comes from a $5 instant game with stated odds of 1 in 3. 61 for any prize.
Still, the recent prize carries concrete, immediate uses. Leclaire said the $88, 888 will help buy a new home, furnish it and allow him to save a portion. Those stated plans give the smaller win a clear practical role that contrasts with the broader scale of his million-dollar results.
He also mentioned a personal reason for choosing the ticket: he is a fan of David Pastrňák and saw the number 88 on the ticket, which influenced his purchase decision. That anecdote links the Instant Lunar 8s play to a specific motivation not described for the earlier wins.
Finally, the location detail—collecting at the OLG Prize Centre in Toronto—underscores that Leclaire followed formal collection steps for the recent win as he did for earlier prizes.
Finding: Placing the Instant Lunar 8s $88, 888 prize side by side with Leclaire’s 2017 $1 million and 2025 $3 million wins shows one clear verdict: emotionally, Leclaire treats each win with similar intensity; evaluatively, the smaller Instant Lunar 8s prize serves a different, more targeted financial purpose than the multimillion-dollar windfalls.
The next confirmed data point that will test this finding is whether Leclaire completes his planned purchase of a new home and how much of the $88, 888 he saves. If Leclaire follows through on buying a new home and saves a portion of the prize, the comparison suggests he treats Instant Lunar 8s as a supplemental, practical boost rather than a transformative fortune on the scale of his earlier seven-figure wins.
