After serving for three years in the United States Army, he taught at Washington State College from 1961 to 1964, and the University of Kansas from 1964 to 1973 before moving to the University of British Columbia where he remained until his retirement in 1998 as Distinguished Professor of Linguistics.
[1] Kinkade served for many years as a trustee of the Jacobs Fund of the Whatcom Museum Foundation, which supports fieldwork on Pacific Northwest languages and cultures and was one of the founders of the annual International Conference on Salishan and Neighboring Languages in 1966.
[1] His contributions include dictionaries of three Salishan languages: Moses Columbia (1981), Upper Chehalis (1991), and Cowlitz (2004);[2] over one hundred papers; several contributions to the Handbook of North American Indians (Volumes 7, 12, and 17); and several encyclopaedia and other general articles.
As befits a specialist in a group of languages renowned for their phonetic difficulty Kinkade had a reputation as a master practical phonetician.
Kinkade had a great, though dry, sense of humor and was generous with his time and extensive knowledge.