[1][2] He was the son of V. Chelvanayakam, head of the Department of Tamil at the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, and Kamalambikai.

[1][2][4] Kanaganayakam was a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Jaffna before joining the University of British Columbia on a Commonwealth scholarship, receiving a Ph.D. degree in 1985 after producing a thesis, supervised by W. H. New, on the writings of Zulfikar Ghose.

[1][2][3][7] Kanaganayakam joined the University of Toronto's Department of English in 1989 to research and teach Commonwealth literature.

[1][2][3] On the morning of November 22, 2014, Kanaganayakam was inducted to the Royal Society of Canada as a fellow in Quebec City.

[1][2][3][7] That evening, as he went to a celebratory dinner in Montreal, he suffered a heart attack and died.