Eddy’s Kingdom is a documentary that explores the life of businessman Eddy Haymour , a castle he built in Peachland and his acquisition of Rattlesnake Island in the late 1900’s.
Director Greg Crompton told AM1150’s Early edition he grew up in the valley and always found the story intriguing.
“My dad worked in real estate at the time and Eddy at one point wanted the island appraised. My dad went with him to the island and soon realized that he was not a guy to be worked with because he was uttering threats at that time and so my dad didn’t work with him. But we heard that story growing up and then boated by the island with a pyramid on it for a while and drove by the castle with a statue of Eddy pointing to the island and so I really figured there’s got to be a lot to this story that is not being told.”
Eddy Haymour longed to build a Middle Eastern themed amusement park on Rattlesnake Island but those plans were met with a hard ‘no’ from the community, due to environmental concerns and other factors.
“All of Peachland is looking at Rattlesnake Island and they didn’t want that kind of destroyed, which to a certain degree, I certainly believe them and the interviews they gave and I think that’s true. I think there was an element that he’s a Lebanese businessman with, as his daughter put it, these gold chains a white suits and flashy. He has a certain different style of doing business that I think rubbed a certain amount of people in the Okanagan, in the early 70’s, the wrong way.”
Crompton said the story is one of many twists and turns and that he is happy Eddy was willing to share it.
“Every time I talked to him, he would say ‘Oh and this,’ ‘Oh yea and that,’ and he would just say all of these wild things he had done from almost blowing up the legislature to taking out judges. Every time I talked to him I was just shocked that he was telling me this stuff and that I could actually corroborate it,” said Crompton.
The documentary is available at DOXAfestival.ca until Sunday, June 28th.