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Douglas Cardinal was born in Calgary, Alberta, on March 7, 1934 to Joseph and Frances Cardinal. Joseph Cardinal was of Blackfoot ancestry, but his family was fully integrated into the community of European and American settlers. "Cardinal senior had a lifelong passion for nature, especially animals, and was one of the first conservationists and forest wardens in the province. The family soon moved to the Porcupine Hills, where Joseph had a job as a forest ranger in the summer fire season, surviving by guiding hunters and trapping in the fall and winter." [1] Young Cardinal grew up with a deep appreciation and wonder of the environment, which was later reflected in his work. According to Cardinal, "My father had a tremendous affinity for the land. So I started to see things through his eyes more... the beauty of the land and how nature had solved various problems with an infinite variety of structural and mechanical solutions."

Cardinal's mother, Frances Marguerite Rach, grew up in the small southern Alberta town of Madden. "Her father was a German immigrant, her mother a member of the Morin family, a large Metis clan in northern Alberta. Like her husband, she seldom acknowledged her native ancestry. Douglas thus grew up in a conspiracy of silence regarding his Indian roots. Only the obvious native legacy of his facial features belied his all-white upbringing." [2]

"Douglas remembers a side trip from a hunting expedition with his father where they went to visit a wizened old Blackfoot woman living with the Stony people on an Alberta reserve. It was a decade before Cardinal realized the old woman was his own great-grandmother, as his father gave no indication at the time." [3]

Cardinal was interested in architecture from an early age, but did not like the accepted architectural conventions of tall, glass-covered square buildings. He said these "glass boxes" lacked life and were unnatural. In his youth, he would pore over convent library books, illustrating medieval cathedrals, St. Peter's and other architectural marvels of the Roman Catholic Church. "Despite his pragmatic knowledge of construction, and perhaps because of it, Cardinal's approach to architecture has always been enveloped with the patina of fantasy that developed in the convent [residential school] period. What began as a psychic defence in a period of stress expanded to become the compelling passion of a lifetime." [4]

Cardinal attended the University of British Colombia in 1952, at the age of eighteen. His time at the School of Architecture at UBC was marked with shyness and an outgoing wild streak. At the same time, he faced the prejudice of the members of the school's architectural board, which was predominantly British. Many told him that it took a family of artisans several generations to produce an architect, and that the son of a half-breed trapper from the hills had no chance of success in the field. Eighteen months into his program, Douglas Cardinal returned home. But he refused to be discouraged. He went to work for Bissell and Holman, an architectural firm in Red Deer, Alberta.

"Frank Holman recalls that Cardinal was "the best draftsman and designer I ever employed;" so much so, that thirty years later, he would still pull examples from Cardinal's work for apprentice architects. By 1957, Cardinal was given substantial responsibility around the office, and designed a trapezoidal Anniversary Chapel for the Lutheran Bible Camp on Sylvan Lake, his first completed work." [5]

After a serious car accident in which he broke his back in three places, Cardinal realized that life was too precious to waste away and immediately set about finishing his education. He applied to the University of Texas. One of Cardinal's most influential teachers at the school was Hugo Liepzinger-Pierce. He taught Cardinal a coordinated and integrated approach to designing. His exposure to the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and the avant garde movement of Antonio Gaudi would later influence his own work. Another key influence was his travels through Mexico, examining the baroque beauty of seventeenth century Mexican architecture, with its undulating facades, arched apses, and circular side chapels. His travels through the reservations of Arizona gave him his first exposure to Native American culture, and formed another important influence on his own creativity.

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