‘Not crazy, driven crazy’: Eddy Haymour’s daughter says Peachland icon was misunderstood

Fadwa Haymour reflects on early life as ‘the terrorist’s daughter’

Many in the Okanagan are familiar with the stories about Eddy Haymour, a Lebanese immigrant who had a fascination with Rattlesnake Island in Okanagan Lake and spent the early 1970s trying to develop a Middle Eastern theme park on it.

In the 1980s he built a peculiar looking castle on the side of Highway 97 in Peachland and erected a massive statue of himself pointing to the island across the lake.

His daughter Fadwa grew up in the castle amidst rumours that her father was crazy.

“Every day of my life I had to live in his shadow as Eddy Haymour’s daughter, or ‘the terrorist’s daughter,’ or ‘the crazy man’s daughter.’ I was just a little girl and didn’t deserve that.

“Not that people were rude to my face but they were rude behind my back. You felt you didn’t get invited to a birthday party because you were the crazy man’s daughter.”

Eddy Haymour turned 96 in March and is currently in a senior’s home in Edmonton with dementia. Fadwa is his legal guardian.

She said while her dad has eccentric tendencies and isn’t a perfect human, he isn’t the insane person she grew up hearing about.

“I’ve spent a lot of time as an adult analyzing my dad and searching through his court documents and he isn’t crazy, he was driven crazy,” she said.

Long before Fadwa was born, and before the castle was built, Eddy bought Rattlesnake Island. In 1971, he proceeded to build a grand theme park called “Moroccan Shadou” on it that included a giant concrete camel, an Ogopogo statue and a miniature golf course of which the remains can still be seen today.  

Eddy’s project was continually thwarted by members of parliament and the provincial government who created regulations for building, water and sewer permits as he was building in order to stop him.

By the summer of 1973, the Arabian village theme park was abandoned. Eddy was broke, and his first family had left him.

What ensued was a 13 years of legal turmoil for Eddy, detailed in an expose by CBCs Fifth Estate in 1986.

Eddy made violent threats and was subsequently jailed. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity for possessing brass knuckles and put in Riverview mental hospital in Coquitlam for an indefinite period, where Fadwa said he sold his island to the government under duress.

“The whole time they were saying in his medical reports that he was insane, they weren’t treating him with anything,” Fadwa said. “Lots of the mental health documents supported that he was sane and nothing was wrong with him but they kept extending his stay.

“They only discharged him on the grounds he sold the island and went back to Lebanon.”

Eddy was released from the mental hospital after an 11 month stay and in the fall of 1976 went to Beirut where he and his cousins stormed into the Canadian embassy with machine guns and held more than 30 people hostage, with Eddy demanding his island be returned.

“I cannot condone his actions taking over the embassy but I can see why he was driven to it,” Fadwa said. “He never had bad intentions… he had no other play to make.”

Eight hours later a deal was struck, Eddy was granted amnesty by the Lebanese government and the hostages were released. The federal government returned him to Canada and no charges were laid.

He built a new life in Peachland. He remarried and had Fadwa, they only child from his second marriage.

Meanwhile, he took the B.C. government to court and in 1986 the BC Supreme Court ruled the government had treated him unfairly, that he was wrongly institutionalized and the province had to pay him $250,000 in damages.

At the time of the judgement, Fadwa was five years old.

“I was sitting in a supreme courtroom when I was four or five and had no idea the seriousness of what was going on around me, I just knew I had to be quiet.”

She said her father was never fairly compensated and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Rattlesnake Island project and he “temporarily lost his sanity.”

“When I read the court judgement, the judge really is clear on how awful he was treated and it’s really nice to see those words confirmed on paper.”

Growing up in the castle, Fadwa said she didn’t get a lot of personal time with her father.

“He wasn’t a perfect father. He didn’t come to my baseball games or concerts. He was more concerned about his island and his castle, building bigger and better rooms.

“I wonder if this insanity they labelled him as having wasn’t just a mental health issue as simple as being on the spectrum or having ADHD, which is why he couldn’t be still, always had to have a big project and didn’t consider others.”

Part of Eddy’s drive made him a pioneer in his daughter’s mind.

He arrived as a Lebanese immigrant to Edmonton in 1955, unable to speak English. Within five years he was running a successful barber shop along with several lucrative side hustles.

“He was a pioneer, it must have been terrifying to move to a new country without knowing the language,” Fadwa said. “He has always been two decades ahead of himself. I think his ideas were great but maybe he was attempting too much at once.”

At times, Eddy could be violent.

“He had moments where he terrified me, he could get upset really fast,” Fadwa said. “There was some occasional physical abuse when he was frustrated.

“I don’t know if he always had a temper or if it slowly got worse as time went on and he was tiring of the fight for his island. I’m not justifying his actions but I think you hit a point of frustration where he didn’t know how to rationally tell me to go be noisy somewhere else.”

At one point, Eddy erected a giant statue of himself pointing to Rattlesnake Island.

“It was his big ‘F you’ to the government. I found the level of pettiness funny but I hated the statue because of the attention it brought,” Fadwa said. “When I was mad at him, I’d stand on a balcony above his statue and throw rocks at his statue head.”  

Fadwa and her mom left the castle in 1993. It’s currently being used for rentals and Fadwa isn’t clear who owns it.

The iconic Eddy statue isn’t there anymore and while Fadwa has searched for it she hasn’t found it yet and believes it may have been destroyed.

When asked why she thought her dad’s island theme park was shut down so vehemently, Fadwa pointed to racial discrimination from the “higher ups” and cultural differences, especially the way he approached business.

“It’s how his communication came across, he could be a very demanding person and I think the translation of words from his language to English had different meaning,” she said.

“They stopped him because they didn’t like the cultural aspect of what he was bringing to the Okanagan, they just didn’t like it and were stalling him right from the beginning.”

Fadwa often goes to Alberta to visit her dad and loves his care team, but he has memory loss and reduced verbal abilities.

“I have a good relationship with my dad because I choose to. I’ll never get that father figure out of him and I’ve accepted that. He’s not crazy, just different, and that’s OK.

“I bet he still thinks about that island and I don’t think he’s ever let it go and move on to be happy, and that makes me sad.

“Whether people liked him or not, his ideas or not, he is a truly fascinating piece of BC history. You can’t deny that no matter which side of the fence you sit on.”

An event marking the 40 years since Eddy won in the Supreme Court is happening in August. Go here for details.