Swimming in a Swindler's Pool

I used to go to summer day camps run by the YMCA, which was in a yellow brick building at the corner of Bloor St. and Aberfoyle Cres.

There were no public outdoor pools in Etobicoke back in the 1940s, but we did get to go swimming at the Minnies, just north of High Park and, even more exciting, in a private pool at Eddie De Palma’s palatial house at 21 Lorraine Gardens.

De Palma was the talk of Etobicoke in the late 1940s. The scuttlebutt was that he was being run out of Argentina, and that he was Italian. Neither turned out to be true.

Eddie De Palma went to Bill Eager, who was the director at the Y, and said he had a swimming pool and wanted the children to learn to swim. It was as if he wanted to ingratiate himself with the community.

El Capistrano — that’s what he called his house — was like an estate, and we were warned within an inch of our lives not to scream or yell, and to behave ourselves when we were in the pool because Eddie’s wife was ill.

I don’t know what she was suffering from. She had a private nurse who would bring her out onto the upper terrace. She would watch us in the pool, but we weren’t to make a fuss. So we didn’t. We behaved because we were thrilled out of our minds to be swimming there. It had beautiful stone gates, and it’s still there.

Who was Eddie De Palma?

Eddie De Palma was on the run in the 1940s, but not from Argentinian authorities. He had skipped out on bail in the United States, where he was charged with selling stock to gullible Americans in non-existent gold mines. Estimates put U.S. investor losses at around $3 million.

As newspaper articles noted, De Palma was better off forfeiting $50,000 U.S. in bail money and fleeing to Canada. The charges he faced in the U.S. could have resulted in up to 70 years in jail and a $50,000 fine — and he could not be extradited from Canada on those particular charges.

Far from being Italian, De Palma was born in South Africa. His name was originally Edward Zuckor. He first went to the United States, where he secured his American citizenship, then married a Canadian and immigrated to this country in 1940, still using the name Zuckor.

A 1948 front-page Globe and Mail article records that De Palma’s lawyer was seeking a delay in his client’s naturalization hearing so that he could bring individuals into court to testify positively on De Palma’s behalf. Inviting children from the community to swim in his pool no doubt would have helped his cause.

He never escaped his shady reputation. When De Palma died in 1957, the Globe and Mail said it all in the headline: “Stock Broker Called Swindler On Grand Scale.”