Duncan was raised in mohkínstsis, a.k.a. Calgary, and has lived in amiskwaciwâskahikan, a.k.a. Edmonton, since 2009. Like many other Albertans his parents moved to Treaty 6 territory to work in the oil and gas industry and support their family.
He was a voracious reader growing up and consumed the Calgary Herald on a daily basis. His mom and dad were largely apolitical when Duncan was young.
Duncan eventually ended up getting a journalism degree from Mount Royal College (now University). To his great shame Duncan freelanced for the Calgary Sun as a news photographer and web editor before finding his first salaried job working for a now defunct business magazine publisher in Edmonton.
Journalism was attractive to Duncan because it helped explain the world. Politics was always an interest but it was like reading the sports pages—a competition that didn’t materially affect him. But the inequality and injustices in this province soon became too obvious to ignore. Like many of us out here, Duncan has had to grapple with the fact that Canada's history and even its present are far more sinister than the Heritage Moments and newspapers were telling us. And like many of us out here, he was getting sick of the cruelty and corruption of our series of right-wing governments.
In 2016 Duncan founded the non-profit Progress Alberta which has been operating ever since. Progress Alberta started off as an investigative and advocacy journalism platform which also dabbled in a lot of organizing both in and out of electoral politics. Shortly after Progress Alberta popped up, so did Jason Kenney's provincial politics career—and the little non-profit has been a thorn in his side ever since.
After getting Progress Alberta off the ground and into a stable state Duncan led its transition into a worker-controlled co-op. He remains as one of those workers there now, and in addition to the investigative journalism he's been doing there for years, he is the host of the Progress Report podcast, a weekly dive into what's going on in Alberta's left.
It goes without saying that Premier Jason Kenney would very much prefer to not recommend Duncan Kinney as Alberta's next 'elected' Senator.