Days after his house burned down, he got a 2 am call saying he'd won a house in a $50 raffle: 'Are you kidding?'

Just weeks before his house burned down, Canadian musician Daniel Drouin had picked up a $50 ticket for the Big Brothers Big Sisters "dream cottage" raffle on Prince Edward Island. He almost didn’t bother — more than 10,000 people had entered. But when disaster struck, that spur-of-the-moment decision turned into a lifeline. "The last day of July, I’d gotten a call at 2:00 in the morning," Drouin recalled in an interview with CBC, "My son called, saying the house was on fire, and it was only minutes away from the fire department. But at that point in time, it was fully engulfed. We lost everything."

Losing a home to fire may feel like the unlikeliest twist of fate, but it happens far more often than people realize. An Analysis of the Canadian National Fire Information Database​ estimated there are about 7,130 residential fires each year. Those fires cause hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries annually, and disproportionately affect vulnerable groups such as children, seniors, and low-income households. The research found that many victims are caught in circumstances where escape times are short and resources to recover afterward are limited.​ Drouin and his children were fortunate to escape unharmed, but the devastation of losing everything overnight is something thousands of families in the country face each year.

Drouin has two children — one had been staying with friends, the other with grandparents — and everyone made it out safely. Still, the family was suddenly displaced, with no home to return to. That’s when fate flipped the script. Just a few days later, Drouin’s phone rang again — it was Myron Yates, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Prince Edward Island. "I have some good news for you. You’re the winner," he said, as shared in a video by Big Brothers Big Sisters PEI on Facebook.

"At first I thought, 'Are you kidding? You've got to be kidding. No, I’m not kidding. My house is gone. Now I have a house. Like, what are the odds?" Drouin said. Back in June, his girlfriend had nudged him to buy the ticket, and they even went to look at the cottage before deciding. "So, I bought a ticket, never thought anything of it," he said. When the call came through weeks after the fire, the timing felt impossible to believe. Around 14,000 tickets were sold for the raffle, with the top prize offering a choice between a prefabricated cottage or $150,000 in cash.

"It’s life-changing, really," Drouin said. "It’s just such a weird coincidence that...I get picked out of that many people. And then all the circumstances that have happened with me and my family in the last month, and then you go and win the house. You know, it’s… what are the odds?" The prize was a prefabricated cottage, but there was also a cash option. "I have a house lined up to buy, and I couldn’t thank everybody enough. It’s changed more than one life this raffle. Sometimes, luck just lands," he said.

He added that he is still wrapping his head around the rollercoaster of the past few months. "Somebody said to me today, 'You’re the luckiest, unluckiest person I know,'" he shared. For Drouin, the ticket he almost didn’t buy now means stability, a roof, and what he called "a fresh start."

"It means a fresh start, really, I mean, yeah, and a fresh start for the kids, too, and everybody will be back together," he said.

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