Good News: Canadian lottery winner, 64 y-o TOM CHRIST donates $40 million jackpot to charity....Crist donated the entirety of his winnings to cancer research in honor of his late wife....Still, it took Crist more than six months to tell anybody — including family members — he’d won.

Linda Carroll TODAY contributor 

Photo Courtesy of Western Canada

"You're not getting a smile, nothing," Tom Crist

 told the cameraman for the required Western

 Canada Lottery Corp. picture. Crist donated the

 entirety of his winnings to cancer research in 

honor of his late wife.

Unlike most big lottery winners who spend days, or even months, trying to figure out how they’ll spend their newfound riches, Tom Crist needed only a moment to decide where his $40 million in winnings would go: all to charity. Top on the list would be the medical center that cared for his late wife when she developed cancer.

Still, it took Crist more than six months to tell anybody — including family members — he’d won. The retired Calgary executive had been lunching between rounds of golf in Palm Springs when his cell phone rang and he was told the news.

“I was speechless,” Crist, 64, said in a recorded interview with Canadian public radio station CBC. “I really didn’t know what to say.”

Crist hung up the phone, finished lunch and went back to golf.

“I knew where the money was going to go as soon as I got that call,” he told the CBC. “I just didn’t want the media, the press, all that kind of stuff. So I just kept putting it off and putting it off, and putting it off.”

Finally at the behest of the Western Canada Lottery Corp., he agreed to go public and have his photo taken. The fine print on the lottery subscription he’d bought had demanded as much.

The shy and retiring senior showed up for his win photo in dark glasses and a baseball cap.

“They asked, ‘Is that your natural look?’” Crist told the CBC. “I said, yep. That’s all you’re getting. You’re not getting a smile, nothing.”

The former CEO of EECOL Electric said he didn’t need the money for himself or his family.

"I guess I've been fortunate enough through my career, you know, that I had, with the company that I was with, to be fortunate enough to have a good living and be able to remain to have a good living and look after my kids,” he told Reuters. “So, I don't really need the money."

His plan was to donate his winnings in honor of his wife Jan, who died in February of 2012 after a long battle with lung cancer.

“It’s very, very, very important,” he told the CBC, his voice starting to crack. “Because, you know, we lost a wife, a mom and a grandma. She beat it for a while, six years, and it finally caught up with her.”All of which made it supremely important for Crist to donate to cancer treatment and research. “Cancer is dear to my heart because of what happened to her,” he told the CBC. “This just gives me the opportunity to give back.”

Crist delivered his first big check — $1.2 million — on Tuesday to the Alberta Cancer Foundation, which collects donations for Calgary’s Tom Baker Cancer Centre, where Jan had been treated.