‘Their mutual talent was to love’: Family honours adventurous, loving couple who died after house fire

February 24, 2025 Canuck

After a night of partying in Cape Town during the 1950s, Ted Allan found himself sleeping on the beach. But the next morning it wasn’t the sun what woke him up — his face was instead being eaten alive by fire ants.

Ted’s head had been doused in alcohol after Dawn Younghusband emptied a bottle of sherry on him. Dawn had a crush on Ted, a Winnipegger born and raised, but he wasn’t reciprocating, so she found a way to make her intentions clear, her family said.

“I’ve heard that more than once … [they] liked that story for some reason,” KC Allan, Ted and Dawn’s oldest daughter, told CBC News.

The anecdote forms the beginning of a love story between Ted and Dawn Allan that continued for more than 60 years, until a fire wrecked their long-time home in Winnipeg’s Fort Garry neighbourhood on Dec. 13.

Dawn, 82, and Ted, 88, died together in hospital hours later. Their family is now mourning their loss and honouring the memory of their relationship.

“It’s maybe once in a century that two people, two stars, come together and connect in the way they did,” said Ted and Dawn’s second daughter Jocelyn Allan.

A couple is driving a boat with a person sitting in the back. — Ted and Dawn Allan’s son Mac Allan says his parents were ‘endlessly interested’ in each other’s point of view and knowledge, which was key in preserving their 60-year relationship. (Submitted by KC Allan)

They shared different tastes, but it seemed to work for them, Mac Allan, the couple’s youngest son, said. Ted was a “fitness freak”, a weight lifter who abstained from drinking. Dawn did ballet and wasn’t averse to having a glass of wine.

But to Mac, his parents’ shared thirst for each other’s knowledge was key in cementing their marriage’s longevity.

“They say passionate relationships wear down over time, but not for them,” he said. “They were endlessly interested in the other’s point of view … that’s what made them special.”

From Cape Town to Winnipeg to N.Z.

After a floundering attempt at university in Winnipeg, Ted wound up in London to learn the marine insurance business from a cousin in the 1950s. But after crossing the Atlantic for an adventure, the 19-year-old soon ended up with a job in construction to clean up the rubble left from the Second World War, his family said.

Not long after, he moved to Cape Town and rented a hut by the sea, where he would meet Dawn, who was a beach bum, and late-in-life baby with little parental supervision.

She grew up in the small cottage of a working class family right on Clifton Beach, a neighbourhood of bungalows now wiped away by condos.

“They were both in their teens, partying on the beach,” Mac said. “Their circles eventually merged and they got to know each other.”

Months passed, and Ted went back to Canada, but not without committing to a long-distance relationship with Dawn. The time apart ended two years later, when they married in South Africa and moved together to Manitoba in the early 1960s.

Ted worked as a columnist for The Winnipeg Daily Tribune, and Dawn joined CBC Radio as a reporter.

But as a couple living with three children in Wildwood Park, Mac said their parents were constrained by the standards of suburban life and “itching to get back out.”

A group of people smile to the camera. — In 1972, Ted and Dawn put their house on the market and sold everything they could. They travelled through New Zealand with KC, Jocelyn and Mac Allan, their children, for the next three years. (Submitted by KC Allan)

So In 1972, Ted and Dawn put their house on the market and sold everything they could in order to buy a Volkswagen camper van. They jumped on a boat heading to New Zealand, where they travelled for the next three years.

“It was a time when ‘parenting’ wasn’t a verb yet,” Mac Allan said. “The way children are raised today with a close eye … they just let us be.”

To Jocelyn Allan it meant learning about resilience and developing the capacity of thinking on her feet because there wasn’t a big safety net below — aptitudes that carried into adulthood.

“We were just so happy,” Jocelyn said.

A second set of parents

But their return to Winnipeg was a hard landing, the siblings said. At a time when the hippie period thrived, his parents were once again confined to the conventional life of nine-to-five jobs, house chores and school, Mac Allan said.

Ted joined the Winnipeg Free Press, but his great distraction was a gym he built in the basement of the family home, the siblings said. Meanwhile, Dawn found purpose in pursuing higher education, taking English courses at the University of Winnipeg.

Once their house turned into an empty nest, Ted and Dawn took off and travelled. They visited Mexico, Fiji and Tahiti in the last 30 years of their life.

But Winnipeg was always their anchor point and their home, where they also helped raise their grandchildren.

The Weekend Morning Show (Manitoba)21:20A tribute to their parents whose lives were lost in a fire

Dawn and Ted Allan perished in a house fire on Dec 14, 2024. Their children KC, Mac, and Joc Allan joined Bruce to share stories about their adventurous lives and pay tribute to their parents’ passion for life.

Haley Allan Fox lived with her grandparents on and off throughout her life. To her, Ted and Dawn were more like her second set of parents.

She remembers how her grandfather played jazz tapes to help her fall asleep at night. He was “a gentle soul,” and a relentless animal feeder.

Dawn, meanwhile, was the “epitome of the best older sister,” the fierce and loving figure she looked up to growing up. She was a feminist, loyal to a fault and a creative force, Fox said.

“Without them you feel this … massive loss of identity. I shaped myself so much around who they were,” Fox said. “I felt I was wrapped in them and that I lost … I feel almost inadequate.”

A man and a woman smile to the camera. — Ted and Dawn Allan, seen in a picture from 2006, also figured prominently in the lives of their granddaughters Jocelyn Bransford and Haley Allen Fox, who remember their grandparents for the bonding role they held in the family. (Submitted by KC Allan)

To Jocelyn Bransford, Ted and Dawn’s granddaughter, they were the family axis around which everyone orbited. They were also intellectuals — rigorous writers at their core — and curious thinkers.

“They were probably the only people left who were sure I was gonna go back to college, constantly nagging about it,” she said. “I went back … and I graduated the day they died.”

Over the last years Ted started losing his hearing while Dawn went blind last summer. But even as their quality of life was impacted, they still kept the same youthful energy going, the family said.

“I remember asking my mother at one point, ‘How are your lives like, are you happy?’ and she said ‘our days are great. We talk, we laugh, we read, we pat each other and hug,'” Jocelyn Allan said.

They were still as engaged in talking and sharing thoughts as they were in their early days as parents, she said.

A couple kiss in a kitchen. — Ted and Dawn Allan, seen in an old picture, had a wealth of knowledge and intellectual rigour, their daughter KC Allan said. (Submitted by KC Allan )

With their passing died the wealth of knowledge and intellectual rigour Ted and Dawn shared, KC Allan said, as well as a “very humane compassion, and moral and principled living.” Those qualities, along with their vibrant sense of humour and playfulness, bonded the family together, she said.

Since their deaths have been shared in public, there has been an outpouring of messages from people impacted by the couple, the siblings said.

“They were just fascinated with everybody that came to the house … they showed a real interest in other people’s lives,” Jocelyn Allan said.

“Their mutual talent was to love.”

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