Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Allen, Richard Orme
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Richard Orme Allen was the sixth and youngest child of the Rev. James Allen and Emma Jane Peters. He was raised primarily in Toronto and educated at Victoria College, University of Toronto. In May 1916 he enlisted in the Canadian Navy as a wireless operator and served until 1918. He was trained in Halifax and stationed at Point Riche in Newfoundland and then on Sable Island, Nova Scotia. After the war he returned to Toronto, where he worked as a civil servant and bookkeeper. He kept in touch with people he had known in the Navy, especially those who had been with him on Sable Island. After reading Thomas Raddall's The Nymph and the Lamp (1950), 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.