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There was no bigger winner than Bountiful, B.C., polygamist Winston Blackmore last month when the Canadian government sent out cheques for the expanded Universal Child Care Benefit.

Blackmore, who is awaiting trial on a single criminal charge of polygamy, has 133 children ranging in age from babies to adults.

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For every child under the age of six, Canadian parents received $520, and for every child aged seven to 18, they received $420, with no restrictions on how the money could be spent.

Using the best information available from several sources, the 58-year-old fundamentalist Mormon leader has as many as 98 children who are 18 or younger, and as many as 20 of those are seven and younger.

What makes it easier to determine the Blackmore children’s ages is that his offspring were often given names that started with a specific letter of the alphabet depending on which year they were born. There was the year when most (if not all) had names starting with O. Other years, there were the Rs, the Ms, the Ns, the Ps, followed by the As, then the Ws (although, surprisingly, no Winston), the Ss and the Hs.