Donald Keith McNamee was born in Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, in 1938. He earned a BA from the University of Saskatchewan, and both an MA and MFA from the University of Ohio. He returned to the University of Saskatchewan, where he taught Art and Art History for twenty years. In 1985 he left the University to establish his own business, doing independent architectural design. In addition to his career as an artist, McNamee was a fixture in Saskatoon's gay and lesbian community. Meetings at his house were used to help start the first gay organization in Saskatoon, the Zodiac Friendship Society (later, the Gay/Lesbian Community Centre of Saskatoon). In the early 1980s McNamee was one of the founding members of the Coalition for Human Equality (CHE), formed to respond to perceptions of homophobia in the provincial Conservative government of the time. McNamee was instrumental in the Coalition, and was particularly effective in the 1992 campaign to urge the NDP government to amend the human rights legislation to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. He died of cancer in Saskatoon on 2 July 1994.