He was born in Peace River, Alberta, moved to Saskatoon with his family and graduated from Aden Bowman Collegiate in 1989.

Like most fencers, foil was his first weapon and the stepping-stone towards succeeding in epee, at cadet and junior levels and qualified for the Saskatchewan team at the 1989 Western Canada Summer Games at Winnipeg. Allan and his friends emerged as the team epee champions at the Western Canada Summer Games.

Having competed at the national championships since 1988, he showed continuous improvement and in 1990, he and his coach Claude Seguin were off on a European tour.

Allan was one of the five Canadian epee specialists selected to represent his country at the Pan-American Games at Havana, Cuba, in August 1991.

By November 1991, he was touring again; this time he was selected for the Canadian team, which went to the world junior championships at Istanbul, Turkey, in November 1991.

Allan was chosen as the alternate for the Canadian team, which went to the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, in August 1992.

Canada was in the epee team event, which included teams from Poland, Italy and Hungary. Allan got his first match against Italy, lost the last bout but it was a lesson in the kind of experience required at the Olympics.

On the second day of the preliminary round, the Canadians faced Hungary, and gained some satisfaction. Hungary eventually took silver in the finals, the Canadians were seventh but it was the country’s best-ever fencing results at the Olympics.

Allan competed at the world senior championships at Essen, Germany, in 1993. He also had another opportunity to go to the world championships in 1994.

While pursuing his engineering degree at the University of Saskatchewan, Allan also got the opportunity to fence at World University Games at Fukuoka, Japan.