Leslie Allen (1921 – 2020)
Les Allen was born in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England to parents William and Ellen Allen. All of his nine siblings served during the Second World War. Les was in the Royal Air Force as an air crewman, stationed in Singapore, India, and Canada, and worked as an airframe fitter.1)
In 1948, a family he met in Saskatchewan, the Whitmores, sponsored him as an immigrant to Canada. In 1949, Les and the Whitmore’s son Bill were offered a job at Keno. They had to pay their own way north and rode with the freight in a transport plane from Whitehorse to Mayo. Les rode the whole way sitting on a side of beef. Les and Bill worked for three years at the mine, cutting wood to heat the bunkhouses. They prospected in the summer and built a cabin on the Teslin River near where Pansy Jackson’s family fished. Les worked for a few seasons as a deckhand on a sternwheeler and in 1951, Allen and Whitmore transported the Yukon’s first bison to the Braeburn area. They helped Pansy’s uncle Joe fish and then started helping Pansy’s family as well. Les tells a story about a broken oar that threw Pansy into his arms, and that’s when [1955] he asked her to marry him.2)
Les and Pansy raised their family of five children on the trapline at Johnsons Crossing where Les ran a guiding business in the summer. He also worked for the Yukon Forest Service in Teslin and Whitehorse and supervised and mentored youth on various fire crews.3) Margaret Marsh described Les as a leprechaun wearing a woollen cap. He was a talented artist who augmented his income from guiding by painting portraits of Pansy’s family.4) Les got too busy to paint but took it up again after he retired.5)