No Winner Yet in Catch The Ace But Fundraising Target Met

Jeff Green | Sep 11, 2025

Red Emond hasn't played a lot of Sunday golf this year. The Past President of the Lions Club of Land O'Lakes has been busy every Sunday morning since the fall of 2024 r, as one of two stars in what has become a weekly 10 minute  local reality show.

Red has been the Pat Sajack to his co-host Sandra Carman's Vanna White, at 11am on Sunday's for the past 43 weeks.

Each time Sandra rolls the drum, Red pulls out a paper ticket with the name and phone number of a weekly raffle winner. The jackpots started pretty small, a couple of hundred dollars, and each winning ticket also had a number from 1-52, corresponding to an envelope that Sandra pulled off the wall. Inside each card is one of 52 cards in a standard deck. 51 of those cards are worth the same, nothing. The elusive Ace of Spades brings with it the grand prize, which has been bumping up each week as a portion of the proceeds from the weekly raffle are added on to it.

At first the jackpot went up slowly, but now  the total is going up by over $10,000 each week.

This Sunday the estimated jackpot is over $90,000, perhaps approaching $95,000. Five dollar tickets are available online and in local stores  (see QR code below) and the winner of the raffle this week will have a 1 in 8 chance of winning it all. 

On top of that, the weekly raffle prize has been going up each week, and was $6,300 last week.

Catch the Ace has a higher purpose, however

The major fundraising goal of Catch the Ace was to help the club reach a $200,000 fundraising threshold that they have been working on for two years, to cover all of the costs associated with completing the club’s community emergency preparedness plan by turning their hall into a shelter in case of a community emergency. The impetus for the project was the Derecho of May 18, 2022.  

Residents from surrounding communities will be able to go to the hall  in case of a disaster, for shelter, food, whatever is required.

The work included a kitchen renovation, completed last summer, an accessible ramp installation,  a large, wired-in generator, capable of powering the entire building, and the construction of an accessible washroom. The goal of Catch the Ace was to fund the generator, which was purchased in the summer and has been installed. The  piece is a fully accessible bathroom that is going in early in 2026. By February 1st, the hall will be fully equipped to help Addington Highlands and North Frontenac Ward 1 residents, in case of a large-scale emergency.

Thanks to Catch the Ace, the Land O'Lakes Lions are now in a position to start looking again at other ways to support the community. They have approached North Addington Education Centre, and are now going to be funding $15,000 in technology upgrades for students. The school will be able to purchase tablets and laptops for student use in the IT courses.

While the Lions are happy to make more and more money each week until the jackpot is claimed, they are also ready for a rest.

The volunteer effort to gather tickets from the stores that sell them locally, make out the tickets from online sales, and put the Sunday morning Facebook broadcast together week after week, has taken its toll on the members.

But as the jackpot approaches $100,000 and all proceeds continue to go right back into the community, it's hard to see much of a downside to Catch the Ace.