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Kinsmen Club member and barrel spinner Beth Tozer, Kinsmen Dream Home Lottery chair Graham Forsythe and Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson draw the winning ticket on the 35th Kinsmen Dream Home Lottery at Slush Puppie Place in Kingston on Friday, Feb. 20, 2026. Francine Bedard of Kapuskasing, Ontario, won the $1.644 million home. Photo by Bill Hall /The Whig-Standard
An Ontario couple is fulfilling their dream of moving to Kingston thanks to the local Kinsmen Club and its annual dream home draw.
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The 35th Kinsmen Dream Home Lottery announced its winners at Slush Puppie Place on Friday and the top prize went to Francine and Mitch Bedard, who live in Kapuskasing.
Francine’s name was pulled during the live draw, entitling her to the keys to the Kinsmen Dream Home, valued at $1.644 million
The Kapuskasing residents were nearly speechless when they received the call from Kingston’s Kinsmen club treasurer Sean Allen shortly after the draw.
Sean Allen of the Kinsmen Club of Kingston emcees a livestream of the 35th Kinsmen Dream Home Lottery at Slush Puppie Place in Kingston on Friday, Feb. 20, 2026. Photo by Bill Hall /The Whig-Standard
After a few deep breaths and a few “oh my gods,” Francine and her husband, Mitch, shared their hope to call Kingston home in a telephone interview.
“We’ve been dreaming of this moment for so long,” Francine Bedard said. “We’ve wanted to move to Kingston for years.”
The Bedards said they purchase a Dream Home ticket every year in hopes of living closer to their sons, Donald in Ottawa, and Remi and his wife, Jessica, in Kingston.
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The Bedards’ son Remi went to school in Kingston and has been working at Kingston General Hospital as a respiratory therapist for the last 20 years.
Every year, the Bedards said, they buy their tickets online like clockwork without delay, and this year they made a trek to the Limestone City to have a good look at the property.
“We came to Kingston around Christmastime to look at it,” she said. “We looked at every cupboard, every appliance. We imagined living in that house, for sure.”
The Bedards are wasting no time settling the details and taking possession of the house — and for good reason. They have booked and paid for a one-month trip to the Dominican Republic, which begins March 10.
Mitch Bedard said, “We got the ball rolling quickly because, unfortunately, we can’t postpone or cancel the trip. There’s no chance of a refund.”
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The winners will arrive in Kingston on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they meet with Allen to survey the house one more time before signing the papers on March 3. They’ll stay with their son, Remi, and hope to have legal possession of the home before they leave for their trip.
The Bedards made it very clear that moving closer to family in Kingston is so important. They stated emphatically that it would not have been possible had they not won the home.
Property values in Kingston are nearly double what they are in Kapuskasing, according to Mitch Bedard.
“Anything we looked at in Kingston over the years was worth about $900,000 — nearly a million dollars,” he said. “We would have had to take out a mortgage, and we didn’t want that. We’ve been debt-free for years now.”
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The Bedards’ son, Remi, and their daughter-in-law, Jessica, were just as excited.
“We normally watch the live stream of the draw, but we were out, busy with our daughter, and my phone started blowing up,” Jessica Bedard said in a phone interview on Saturday.
“I called them right away,” she said. “They weren’t at all aware. They hadn’t heard the good news yet.”
Jessica works for the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario and was born and raised in Kingston.
“I have lots of family here, but not Remi’s family — his brother is in Ottawa, but his parents aren’t close at all. It’s a 12-hour drive,” she said. “It’s so nice now that his parents will be here, too. The GPS says they’ll only be 12 minutes away now. That’s way better than 12 hours.”
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She added that the great distance between them has been a growing concern as her in-laws grow older.
“What will we do when they need us and they’re 12 hours away? Right now, they have to drive for two hours to get to a doctor,” she said. “This is so much better in so many ways.”
“Every ticket was sold. That’s 17,500 tickets in this barrel,” said lottery chair Graham Forsythe on the night of the draw.
That’s quite an accomplishment considering the campaign was only 70-per-cent sold out a week before the draw.
“Though some of our ticket buyers are from out of town, 85 per cent of our tickets are bought here in Kingston by Kingstonians,” Forsythe said. “No matter who buys the tickets, 100 per cent of the proceeds stay in our community.”
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The greatest charities in need lately, according to Forsythe, are those that deal with food insecurity.
Kinsmen Club Treasurer Sean Allen agreed.
“St. Vincent de Paul, Martha’s Table, and Partners in Mission Food Bank are just a few of the organizations that will benefit from the money raised by the Kinsmen Dream Home Lottery,” Allen said.
According to Feed Ontario’s annual hunger report, it showed that more and more Ontario residents are relying on food banks to survive.
Here in Kingston, Partners in Mission Food Bank helped more than 9,400 people, including 2,800 children.
The winners from the annual draw Friday night included:
$5,000 furniture package — Mike Nourry, ticket 0770;$5,000 furniture package — Catherine Murphy-McAllister, ticket 14056;$5,000 furniture package — William Baker, ticket 17447;$5,000 furniture package — Joshua Dickson, ticket 16886;$5,000 furniture package — Danuta & Waldemar Pawlak, ticket 01089;$5,000 furniture package — Marvin Gonzales, ticket 10458;$5,000 furniture package— Mark & Deb Millan, ticket 13920;$5,000 cash prize — Brad & Deb Rose, ticket 03559;$5,000 cash prize — Michael Sewell, ticket 00830;$5,000 cash prize — Sothea Yeatman, ticket 06501;$5,000 Cash prize — Walter Saccon & Pina Hunter, ticket 10293;$10,000 Cash prize — Anatolii Senchenko, ticket 15205;$5,000 vacation — Kevin Reynolds, ticket 03393;$5,000 vacation — Mark Pelley, ticket 11750;$5,000 vacation — Jadwiga Sobiesiak, ticket 14105;$5,000 vacation — Honesty Heyink, ticket 09753;$10,000 vacation — Linda Ryan, ticket 06137;$60,000 Ford Mustang — Sandra McGregor, ticket 04767;$1,644,000 Kinsmen Dream Home — Francine Bedard, ticket 00639.
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