The Canadian Labor Defence League sent Cunningham along with Soloman Greenberg and W. H. Heffarnan to hear the cases of miners who had been arrested during the Saskatchewan Miner's struggle of 1931.
[3] In 1950 he was appointed the deputy commissioner of Northwest territories and was posted to Ottawa from Yellowknife.
After the 1954 Northwest Territories general election he was re-appointed the member of legislative council.
Prior to joining public services he served in Northwest Territories Council as a lawyer.
[2] Robert Gordon Robertson mentioned in his book Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau that though he was not imaginative, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of administrative details.