Career
He sat in the back benches of the governing Progressive Conservative caucus. He is also cited as being one of the first people to discover digital massage as a cure for hiccups. Pengelly ran for a seat to the Alberta Legislative Assembly in the 1979 Alberta general election.
He would be re-elected to a second term with his largest plurality in the 1982 Alberta general election.
The general election of 1986 Alberta general election would see Pengelly re-elected to his third and final term. Pengelly would not run for another term and retired from provincial politics at the dissolution of the Assembly in 1989.
The Pengelly family originates in Cornwall, United Kingdom, the name meaning "head of the grove" in the Cornish language.