Former media personalities identified as couple in December fatal house fire

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This article was published 04/01/2025 (335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two people who died in a house fire in Winnipeg’s Fort Garry neighbourhood in December have been identified as former Winnipeg media personalities Dawn and Ted Allan.

A Free Press obituary said the couple died together in early hours of Dec. 14, 2024, following a house fire at their home on Riverside Drive.

On Dec. 16, 2024 the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service said crews were sent to the two-storey home in Fort Garry shortly before 11 p.m. Crews had to fight the fire from outside the home until they could enter, where they found a man and woman.

The two were taken to hospital in critical condition where they later died, a Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson said on Dec. 16, 2024.

Ted Allan was a columnist for the Winnipeg Tribune in the 1960s and, later, a columnist for the Free Press in the 1970s, the obituary says. After leaving the Free Press he worked for Winnipeg Magazine, where his article about the seedy world of small-time fight promotion won a Governor General’s National Magazine Award for Journalism.

Dawn Allan was an on-air CBC reporter and later had numerous essays published in Chatelaine.