Dead Ends Read Free

increasingly convinced he was the victim of a conspiracy.
    But the Royal Bank heard about the problems and delays and pulled his loans.
    The project was dead, and the $170,000 he had spent on it was lost. Haymour couldn’t pay his bills. His marriage, not surprisingly, began to fall apart, and in July 1973 Loreen and the children moved back to Alberta. The government made a lowball offer of $40,000 for the island.
    But Haymour wouldn’t sell. He complained of the conspiracy, pleaded for help from anyone he could reach, even flying back to ask the Lebanese government to intervene. No one believed him. In fact, people thought he was nuts.
    But Haymour was right. Behind the scenes, Bennett, provincial cabinet ministers, local officials, and at least six government departments had been secretly conspiring to make sure the project would never be built.
    Then Haymour went too far. He started to talk about using violence to force the government to address his case. The RCMP put him under surveillance, and an undercover officer befriended him and listened to his angry rants.
    On December 19, 1973, police arrested Haymour and Crown prosecutors laid thirty-seven criminal charges, including manufacturing letter bombs, plotting to blow up a bridge, and conspiring to hijack an airplane. He spent six months in jail awaiting his day in court, passing some of the time by trimming other inmates’ hair.
    Prison was a nightmare. He learned Loreen was filing for divorce and the bank was foreclosing on the island. His dream home was destroyed in a suspicious fire. The insurance renewal form hadn’t reached him in jail, so he had no coverage.
    When he finally appeared for trial, thirty-six of the charges were dropped. All that remained was a charge for possession of lightweight brass knuckles, something that never would have resulted in his detention before trial.
    Haymour wanted to plead guilty, which would have allowed him to walk out of court a free man.
    But the Crown pressed for a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Court-ordered psychiatrists testified Haymour was delusional, believing “there was a conspiracy on behalf of certain people in the government to thwart his business attempts.”
    The fact that his beliefs might be true apparently never crossed anyone’s mind. The judge found Haymour insane and ordered him committed.
    During a recess in the hearing, government representatives pressed him again—sign over the property for $40,000. Desperate to end the process and hoping the government would then leave him alone, he agreed.
    â€œThey adjourned it for 15 minutes and they brought me the paper and asked me to sign,” Haymour said later. “I would have sold it back for a dollar, anything to get the hell out of there.”
    The transaction was illegal and unconscionable, a British Columbia Supreme Court justice would later rule. How could government officials argue Haymour was insane and press him to sell his property to them at the same time?
    Haymour spent eleven months in Riverview mental institution before being released in 1975, planning to return to Lebanon. (He believed leaving Canada was a condition of his release.)
    After four years of struggle, most people would have given up.
    But Haymour raised the stakes. He enlisted some cousins in Beirut, got his hands on machine guns and, on February 26, 1976, stormed into the Canadian Embassy and took about two dozen hostages. After a nine-hour standoff, his key demands were granted—amnesty for the hostage-taking, and a return to Canada so he could press his case for compensation.
    Haymour settled down. But he didn’t give up. He built a small house, borrowed money from a few friends, and tried to interest a lawyer in his case. He finally found a dedicated champion in lawyer Jack Cram, a skillful advocate for the underdog and eccentric, always willing to take on the establishment.
    It took ten years, but on August 7, 1986,