Flemington House

Allen Flemington, 1939, from a Naparima group photo.

Three of the Houses are named after Rev. Walls, Mr. Sammy, and Rev. Grant, whose contributions are detailed elsewhere on this website.

Allen Flemington's contribution, though less well-known, was the greatest possible. The son of a church minister, he came from a well-known family in Sackville, New Brunswick. He graduated from Mount Allison in 1938, and was posted as a missionary to Trinidad, likely the following year. He was young, charming, played the piano in the old Chapel next to the dormitory, and endeared himself to one and all.

With the onset of war, he volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force. He earned his wings in October 1941, and was sent overseas in December. He was killed in action on April 29, 1943, age 31. Like so many others, he gave everything against forces of darkness, which also as a messenger of the church, he had been prepared to oppose.

Trinidad was fortunate to have been relatively untouched by the war; but the sacrifice of A. Allen S. Flemington, along with many thousands of others, is a permanent reminder of a price paid for personal intellectual and physical freedom.

  • The photo of Allen Flemington above is from a Naparima group photo taken in 1939. The photo of his gravestone at right is from the Brookwood Military Cemetery website.

  • To many of his contemporaries at NC, Allen was known by the name of his older brother, Ross, who was then the president of Mount Allison U.

  • Allen received his flight training at Rivers, Manitoba, in one of the many Commonwealth pilot schools hurriedly set up across Canada in 1940. He served as a navigator with 407 Squadron, which had just been assigned an anti-submarine role at the time, flying Wellingtons out of Limavady, Ireland. He is buried at Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, England.