2 weeks Ago By Jim Timlick
From the time they were teenagers, Ted and Dawn Allan shared an unbridled sense of adventure. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * To continue reading, please subscribe: *$1 will be added to your next bill. After your 4 weeks access is complete your rate will increase by $0.
00 a X percent off the regular rate. From the time they were teenagers, Ted and Dawn Allan shared an unbridled sense of adventure. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? From the time they were teenagers, Ted and Dawn Allan shared an unbridled sense of adventure.
In fact, it was that sense of adventure that first drew them to each other as teenagers and kept them together for more than 60 years until their death last December. Their adventure began in 1955 when a 19-year-old Ted Allan left Winnipeg and travelled to London, England, where he landed a job cleaning up debris left over from the Second World War. Supplied Ted and Dawn Allan died Dec.
14, 2024, following a fire at their home on Riverside Drive. Dawn was 82 and Ted 88. It was miserable, back-breaking work and after just a few weeks of enduring the cold, wet English weather, he marched into a travel agent’s office and begged them to send him somewhere warm.
A few days later he boarded a tramp steamer bound for South Africa. He arrived in Cape Town a short time later and found himself partying with locals one night on a beach near Clifton. As fate would have it, a teenage Dawn Younghusband was on that selfsame beach.
The handsome young Canadian lad and the South African beauty quickly noticed each other. They were soon inseparable and spent the next year sharing a mutual love of the ocean and each other. Allan returned home to Winnipeg the following year, but he and Dawn continued to visit each other; in 1961 they were married in Cape Town.
They decided to settle in Winnipeg, although Dawn didn’t exactly know what she was getting into at the time. “Mom always claimed that dad tricked her by taking her to Canada only in the summer. She saw this beautiful, natural preserve with clean, warm water and she didn’t know what the dead of winter was going to be like,” says their daughter Jocelyn, laughing.
The reason they chose to return to Winnipeg was no laughing matter. Ted had become an outspoken critic of South Africa’s apartheid system of racial segregation, which landed him in trouble with authorities. As a result, he spent some time in a South African jail and was eventually asked to leave the country.
Ted and Dawn Allen (Supplied) Shortly after his return to Winnipeg, Ted landed a job as a copy boy at the thanks to his father Tony, the paper’s sports editor. He eventually worked his way up to become the ’s legislature reporter and later a highly regarded columnist. By the early 1970s, Ted had become disenchanted with the newspaper biz.
That was when he and Dawn decided to start a new adventure. In 1972, they sold their home in Wildwood Park, purchased a Volkswagen van, packed up their kids KC (Kathleen Carlyon), 11, Jocelyn, 10, and Mac, 7, and set sail on the SS Canberra for New Zealand, where they spent the next three years camping out on the beach, working odd jobs and tramping around the back country. “My parents were both free spirits .
.. and (part) of a generation in the early 1970s where people were much more willing to try non-conventional lifestyles,” says Mac.
“I don’t think conventionality was their calling.” “They were very young when they got married and so they hadn’t really sown any wild oats,” adds Jocelyn. “By the time they were married and had three kids and were locked into suburbia, they still had that yen to explore and adventure forth that they never really got to revisit since they were teenagers.
” Even though the three kids occasionally attended school during the family’s sojourn in New Zealand, most of the learning they did occurred on the beach. Mac still remembers his parents reading to them at all hours of the night. “My parents were obviously literary people, so reading was a big part of their lives and they always encouraged us to have an interest in reading.
We’d always be up reading till like one or two in the morning, much to the chagrin of the other campers,” he says, laughing. “I would say for my parents it was the experience of their life. I know talking to dad, he would say when he (would) lay in bed at night and think about his life, he would think about those days.
” The family moved back to Winnipeg in 1975 when Ted learned his dad had been diagnosed with cancer. Ted resumed his journalism career soon after when he was hired as a features writer by the . He was given carte blanche to write about whatever he wanted, and Mac says the move rekindled his dad’s passion for writing.
“I think he did his best work when he had the freedom and autonomy to write about what he wanted,” he says. “That’s when I think he really peaked as a writer. He had the freedom to explore his craft and find stories that interested him and then write about them .
.. even though sometimes they were weird or esoteric stories.
” Supplied The Allan family included three children, three grandchildren and great-grandson Walter. Former columnist Gordon Sinclair Jr. first met Ted when he was 16 and working as a copy boy at the .
He got to know him better when he joined the as a columnist in 1981 and Ted was a features writer with the paper. In fact, it was Sinclair’s dad, Gord Sr., the paper’s assistant managing editor, who lured Ted to join the paper.
Sinclair remembers Ted as a charismatic individual with “movie star” good looks and someone who always made time for people regardless of their station in life. However, what really set him apart, Sinclair says, was his talent as a storyteller. “His writing just flowed.
It was intelligent writing,” he says. “Some people write in a florid fashion, they’ll overwrite something. Ted would write not in a florid way, but in a way that sort of captured you.
It made you want to read more and more because of his style. It was the kind of thing you’d read in a magazine but rarely in a newspaper.” Ted was in his late 50s when he retired from the but continued to write well into his 60s.
His story on boxing promoters in won the Governor General’s National Magazine Award for Journalism. Supplied Ted and Dawn Allen Dawn was an accomplished writer and journalist in her own right. She once ignited an uproar while working as a reporter for CBC TV when she interviewed a South African ambassador touring Canada during the height of apartheid.
“I guess my mom asked a bunch of pointed questions about the humanity and fairness of apartheid and it didn’t play well and it created a bit of an incident,” with the South African embassy in Ottawa, Mac recalls. Dawn also wrote for a number of print publications including magazine. Her story, , set in apartheid era Cape Town, won a provincial CBC short story contest.
Despite their shared passion for writing, KC says her parents had very different interests outside of work. Dawn was an avid fan of the arts, while Ted loved sports and working out. What brought them together was a mutual curiosity about the world around them.
“They had really varying, wide-reaching intellects. Their curiosity for the world at large was shared by both of them,” she says. “They were also highly principled people.
Come hell or high water, they always wanted to be on the side of the little guy regardless of how they were perceived at the time.” The third act of Dawn and Ted’s excellent adventure began soon after they retired. With no commitments, they were free to travel the globe.
Although they never did make it back to New Zealand as they hoped, they did get to visit several locales in the South Pacific, including the Cook Islands, Tahiti and Fiji, as well as Mexico and the Caribbean. Dawn Allen wth the children. (Supplied) KC says one of the most enduring memories of her mom was watching her bodysurf in Mexico when she was well into her 70s.
“I think my mom was always happiest by the ocean, and I think if she had a regret, it’s that she didn’t get to spend more time by it in her life,” she says. Tragically, Dawn and Ted Allan died Dec. 14, 2024, following a fire at their home on Riverside Drive.
The cause of the fire has yet to be officially determined. Dawn was 82 and Ted was 88 at the time of their deaths. Their family is planning a private celebration of life in the spring.
Although their three children are still coming to grips with the loss of their parents, they take some comfort from knowing they were together right until the end. “I think (they were) like species that mate for life. One would have withered away without the other,” KC says.
“As kids we always felt like we were passengers in our parents’ love affair. We were just a byproduct of it,” adds Mac with a laugh. Supplied Ted Allan and Dawn Younghusband met on the beach in Cape Town and were married in 1961.
“We were always aware they were having this great love affair and we were lucky that we got to bear witness to it.” [email protected].
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