The sixth and youngest child of the Rev. James Allen (1844-1918) and Emma Jane Peters (1854-1944), he was raised mainly in Toronto and educated at University of Toronto Schools and Victoria College, University of Toronto. In May 1916 he enlisted in the Canadian Navy as a wireless operator and served until the end of the war in 1918. He was trained in Halifax and stationed at Point Riche in Newfoundland and then on Sable Island, which fascinated him. After WW I he lived for the rest of his life in Toronto, where he worked as a civil servant and book-keeper. He kept in touch with the people he had known in the Navy, especially those who had been with him on the island. When he read Thomas Raddall's The Nymph and the Lamp (1950), which was based on Raddall's experience of Sable Island in the 1920s, he established a correspondence with the novelist, wrote several brief accounts of his experiences in the Navy, and visited Raddall at his home in Nova Scotia on at least one occasion.

Donated by creator in 1982.

No further accruals are expected.

Fonds consists of manuscript about Allen's stay on Sable Island, 1917-1918, a Dept. of Marine Notice from 1919, and 60 photographs of Sable Island and its inhabitants at the time of Allen's stay.

Correspondence between R.O. Allen and Thomas Raddall may be found in the Raddall fonds, MS-2-202, folder 37.6.

All files are open.

[Identification of item], Richard Orme Allen fonds, MS-2-474, Box [box number], Folder [folder number], Dalhousie University Archives and Special Collections, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.