2,12,29...

Now who's won the lottery?

It was the most furious gold rush since the Gay Nineties. Canadians queued up in the bitter cold, frequently for hours at a time, uncharacteristically quarreling with one another, while waiting impatiently to buy tickets. Americans thronged across the border to get in on the game as well.

After six weeks of mounting suspense and a burgeoning jackpot, lottery-ticket sales reached $115 million. But more than a week after the top-prize combination of six numbers was announced, the winner of an $11 million Canadian lottery had still not stepped forward. Norman Morris, president of the Ontario Lottery Corp..

said that he felt "very much like the person who threw a party and the guest of honor didn't come." Some party. Some honor.

To be sure, as Morris added, the ticket holder was "facing a fairly traumatic experience." One consideration was personal safety, a fear of kidnapers or extortionists. Another was the inevitable onslaught of promoters, cranks and schemers, all pledging their devotion to the winner's good fortune. Lottery officials cautioned the winner not to reveal the fact until the ticket had been presented to them.

The lottery payoff was the largest for a single ticket yet recorded in the U.S. or Canada. To play Lotto 6/49, ticket buyers chose six numbers between 1 and 49. The prize money mounted as each drawing failed to produce a winning number. The fever touched nearly everyone. Winnipeg Art Dealer Alan de Boer seemed to say it all when, finding himself in a lottery line, he admitted, "This is unbelievable. It is against my nature."

Of course, the winner could turn out to be an American, and under certain circumstances a most unlucky one. It is illegal to bring lottery tickets into the U.S., so Customs agents confiscated tickets when they were declared by returning travelers.

Most people were given the chance to take the tickets back to Canada, but some of them were destroyed after being seized.

Against odds calculated at 135.7 million to 1, only one $1 ticket had the winning combination: 2, 12, 29, 31, 44, 46. No one has calculated the odds of that ticket having been shredded by a Customs agent.

Canadians can keep their winnings tax free. An American would have to pay about half the winnings in U.S. taxes. Like most participants. Marc Lafleche of Montreal did not regret the week's wages he wagered. "Drawings like this are the only way the little guy can dream about a better life," he said. John Thome, 21, an unemployed laborer, can do more than dream. Thorne took his collection of 1,100 pennies to the bank, exchanged them for dollar bills and spent the $ 11 on lottery tickets. He was one of the ten second-prize winners who got $354,784 each. Now who's No. 1 ?