Lavigueur family
The Lavigueur family is a
Jackpot
The Lavigueurs lived in Centre-Sud, a neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec. Jean-Guy Lavigueur had been unemployed for a year and a half after having worked for 34 years at United Bedding Company.
The father had been raising his four children, Sylvie, Yve, Louise and Michel, with the help of his brother-in-law Jean-Marie Daudelin, since the death of the children's mother, Micheline Daudelin, who died of sudden cardiac arrest in 1983. The couple also had two girls who died in infancy from heart problems.
A few days before the draw, Jean-Guy Lavigueur lost his wallet, which was given back to him by a good Samaritan, 28-year-old William Murphy,[2] from Vancouver, British Columbia, who had recently moved to Montreal, and was himself unemployed. Murphy found the wallet and gave it back to Lavigueur, with the lottery ticket which he knew was the jackpot winner. When he got to the Lavigueur house, the eldest son, Yve, answered the door and refused to let him in, not understanding what he wanted. Murphy came back a second time to meet the father.
The new millionaires were Jean-Guy, Sylvie, Yve and Michel Lavigueur, Jean-Marie Daudelin, and William Murphy, with whom the family agreed to share the jackpot. In 1986, Louise Lavigueur, the only member of the family who did not take part in the purchase of the ticket, sued her father to get a share of the jackpot.
Family members
Two members of the Lavigueur family are still[
Louise Lavigueur died from heart failure in 1991,[3] at age 22.[4] The father, Jean-Guy Lavigueur, died from respiratory problems on November 26, 2000.[5][6]
Michel Lavigueur committed suicide on February 11, 2004,[7][8] at age 32.
Popular culture
Television
On December 31, 1986, in a humorous year-end review, Bye-bye 86, Radio-Canada included a sketch titled "Le bourgeois gentilhomme Lavigueur," inspired by Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.
Comics
From 1986 to 1989, the humour magazine
Movies
From 1986, three Dutch movies ( in Quebec and given the French titles Les Lavigueur déménagent, Les Lavigueur redéménagent and Les Lavigueur, le retour. However, these comedies had nothing to do with the real-life family or their experiences.
Books and TV
In 2000, Yve Lavigueur published Les Lavigueur: leur véritable histoire ("The Lavigueurs: the real story",
External links
- Flodder on Internet Movie Database
References
- Société Radio-Canada, March 29, 1986.
- ^ Chris Gudgeon, Barbara Stewart, "Luck of the Draw : True-Life Tales of Lottery Winners and Losers", Arsenal Pulp Press, 2001.
- ^ Les Lavigueur n'étaient pas des « morons », Le Soleil, December 13, 2007
- ^ Dramatique saga de la famille Lavigueur, Le Devoir, December 13, 2007.
- ^ Famous lottery winner dies, CBC, November 27, 2000.
- ^ L’ex-multimillionaire Jean-Guy Lavigueur n’est plus[usurped], LCN, November 27, 2000.
- ^ L’un des Lavigueur s’enlève la vie[usurped], LCN, February 13, 2004.
- ^ Michel Lavigueur aurait eu peur d’être arrêté[usurped], LCN, May 22, 2004.
- Montréal, December 13, 2007, page 27.