(Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, Canadian Football Hall of Fame) In 1990 he was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame honouring his work as an outstanding sports writer in the Prairies. He also wrote Ordeal by Fire: 1919-1945, a book on early 20th century Canadian history. His most successful book, Peace River Country, was inspired by his own experience growing up in Western Canada. Allen wrote five novels some of which were based on his war experience. After the war he worked as an editor for MacLean's Magazine and later on as managing editor of the Toronto Star. He covered Canadian actions in Sicily, Italy and Normandy. In World War Two he enlisted as a gunner for the Royal Canadian Artillery and served until 1943 when he became a war correspondent for the Toronto Globe and Mail. At sixteen he became a sports writer for the Winnipeg Tribune and later on for the Toronto Globe. The son of a CPR railway agent, he lived in a succession of small towns across the Prairies. Ralph Allen (1913-1966) was a Canadian journalist and novelist.

All in all, a notable and natty survey and a fine fifth volume in the Doubleday Canadian Series.”-Kirkus Review. There are, too, trenchant portraits of Mackenzie King and Bennett, explosive ones of Sam Hughes, explanations of Canada's ambivalence with the League of Nations, her relations via America during the Depression when Roosevelt shone more dazzlingly there than in his own country, and considerations of the Chanak affair and the cultural growth of the Left. he steers so steady a course, covering the first stages of economic development, its hardships and hijinks, the land booms and market crashes, the general strike at Winnipeg, the rise of conservatives and isolationism, the Northern Railway, the Naval Question, the Army at Ypres and Verdun, at Normandy and Dieppe, along with the celebrated exploits of the RCAF.

Hahi ludes