Hugh Drummond Allan was born in Scotland and came to Canada around 1907. He became a British Columbia Land Surveyor in 1912. His professional work was carried on mainly in the Kamloops district, where he resided, and the North Thompson River valley. In 1913 he surveyed in the Canoe River area. “From Mile 49 on the Grand Trunk Pacific I proceeded with my party by wagon and reached the Canoe River in one day,” he reported.

Allan was shortly predeceased by his wife and infant child, whether before or after his enlistment after the start of the first World War in 1914. He returned to Scotland and enlisted in Princess Louise’s (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders). In March 1916, Allen, then second lieutenant, made a will in which he bequeathed all his fortune to “Mrs. Kelly,” the mother of his late wife, Gladys Irene Frederika Allan. “[A]nd I declare that I leave nothing to my own relatives not from any want of affection but because they are much better provided for than my late wife’s relatives and I have not a great deal to leave.”

Sometime in 1916 he was wounded, and in 1917 he was killed leading his company at Croiselles, France.

His estate was probated in 1917, coming to a value of $5540. In March 1918 his executor discovered that “there was due to the said deceased from the Imperial Pensions Department the sum of $532.96.”

The National Archives of the U.K. has officer service records pertaining to Lieutenant Hugh Drummond Allan of Princess Louise’s (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders).

There is another Canadian figure of Scottish birth named Hugh Allan [1810–1882], a shipping magnate.