Background
David Duggan was born in Builth, Wales May 5, 1879.
David Duggan was born in Builth, Wales May 5, 1879.
In 1893 he entered the dry goods business, in which he would remain until leaving Wales. Duggan immigrated to Canada in 1905 to farm near Nanton, Alberta. He moved to Edmonton in 1912 and founded Duggan Investments, Limited., a firm handling bonds and investments.
Duggan ran for mayor in the 1920 Edmonton election when, despite lacking any previous experience, he defeated incumbent Joseph Clarke.
Clarke had become unpopular with the city"s Board of Trade and both of its newspapers owing to what they perceived as anti-business policies, and these groups supported Duggan aggressively. While Duggan was mayor, Alberta"s first radio station, CJCA, began operations, and Duggan himself concluded its inaugural broadcast by boasting "Edmonton leads the way in all Alberta.
Calgary and others follow. That is all. Goodnight." He was re-elected in 1921 and 1922, but did not seek re-election after his last term expired.
In this election, the Conservatives picked up a seat in Edmonton (taking three of the city"s six seats), but were shut out of seats outside of Edmonton and Calgary, as they had been in 1926.
Moreover, they lost ground to the rival Alberta Liberal Party in the race to form the official opposition to the governing United Farmers of Alberta. Duggan easily retained his own seat. In response to this catastrophe, Duggan"s Conservatives formed an alliance with the Liberals, whereby candidates for both parties would run as independents and would not run against each other.
In the 1940 election, there were nineteen independents elected, including Duggan.
During his last full term in the legislature, Duggan brought to the house"s attention a government-sponsored leaflet that named him and eight other men (William Antrobus Griesbach among them) as "Banker"s Toadies" and urged readers to "exterminate them". This incident saw two men, including Social Cr Modern Language Association Joseph Unwin, prosecuted for libel and counseling murder.
Duggan was active with the Baptist Church, the Rotary Club, the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, and the Red Cross. He died May 4, 1942 while still an Modern Language Association. He was buried in Mountain.
Pleasant Cemetery in Edmonton.
In 2004, Edmonton City Council passed a motion directing its Names Advisory Committee to strike a subcommittee whose purpose would be, among other things, to honour Duggan by naming a city feature after him.
His attentions turned to provincial politics, and he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta in the 1926 election as a Conservative in the riding of Edmonton. Duggan succeeded Alexander McGillivray as leader in 1930, and led the party into that year"s election.