Chiropractic History Assignment The remarkable Harry Yates, DC – reader comments The Handley Page bomber in Cairo. Harry Yates is fi rst left, Harry St. John Philby is second from the right. The photograph was taken by T.E. Lawrence to mark the record flight. Steve Zoltai is the collections de- velopment librarian and archivist for CMCC and was previously the Assistant Executive Director of the Health Sciences Information Con- sortium of Toronto.He has worked for several public and private libraries and with the University of Toronto Archives. Steve comes by his interest in things historical honestly – he worked as a field archeologist for the Province of Manitoba.He can be contacted at [email protected]. O ur May column chronicling the exploits of Harry Yates, and his record-setting 1919 London-Cairo fl ight, struck a chord with readers. Here are a few of your comments: Dr. Craig Jacobs of Toronto remarked on the dangers of early fl ight and wondered how Col. T.E. Lawrence, the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, came to be stranded in an extinct Cretan volcano. A DANGEROUS BUSINESS Flying was indeed a dangerous business in 1919. 2009 marks the 100-year anniversary of powered fl ight in Canada. Long distance fl ying was no cakewalk in the early 20th century, and it had only been 10 years since the Silver Dart hop-scotched its way into the history books across Cape Breton’s frozen Bras d’Or Lakes. So the prospect of young Harry Yates flying a British VIP across Europe to Egypt, and doing it in record-breaking time, did not augur well for the 22-year-old London, Ontario, native. Earlier that year, 51 Handley Page [HP] bombers left England for the Middle East to reinforce British foreign policy in the increasingly volatile region. Six months later, only 26 had arrived. The others were scattered across Europe, having crashed, or been oth- erwise disabled, and killing 11 airmen. Lawrence was counted among this group when his bomber crashed near Rome, killing both pilot and co-pilot, and immobilizing him with a broken collarbone and damaged ribs. Having convalesced for a time in a Roman hospital, Lawrence managed to continue as far as Crete, where he ran into Yates and Philby when Yates’s HP settled onto an airfi eld inside the crater of the extinct volcano. Yates had been charged with delivering Harry St. John Philby, a Foreign Office opera- tive, to the Middle East to quell tensions arising from the British reneging on promises of Arab autonomy in exchange for their WWI military support against the Ottoman 26 • CANADIAN CHIROPRACTOR | SEPTEMBER 2009 www.canadianchiropractor.ca Steve Zoltai feature
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