McNamara was born in
Renfrew, Ontario on December 27, 1879. He was educated at Saint Laurent College in
Montreal and came to Edmonton in 1886. In 1900 he was hired as the first teacher at Lone Spruce School, an Edmonton boys' school. In 1905 he formed a real estate partnership with Lorne York that acquired real estate in
Camrose, Wetaskiwin, and Edmonton. He was elected mayor of Wetaskiwin in 1909. After returning to Edmonton, he ran for mayor in the
1913 election, in which he defeated incumbent
William Short, receiving 50.2% of the vote in the two person race. In doing so, he became both the first person in Edmonton's history to defeat a sitting mayor and the winner of the closest mayor election in the city's history, a record that still stands. In office, he formed an alliance with future mayor
Joseph Clarke (then an alderman) against those who wanted to drive prostitution and gambling out of the city. McNamara fired both the police chief and the head of the morality squad. His alliance with Clarke ended when the two came to blows in a meeting of
Edmonton City Council. Later in his term, he was convicted by Justice
William Ives of voting on a matter in which he had a pecuniary interest and was, along with alderman
James East, expelled from office on October 27, 1914. He stayed out of politics thereafter. He moved to
Detroit,
Michigan on November 19, 1915. McNamara died on January 1, 1947, at 3:55 pm in
Phoenix, Arizona, of heart failure. ==References==