Cannon trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating in 1918.
He then joined the army and later returned to Utah to intern with the architectural firm Ware & Treganza and Cannon & Fetzer.
[1] For a time, Cannon moved to Los Angeles and worked as the office manager of his MIT schoolmate Wallace Neff.
He later returned to Utah and designed numerous buildings, mostly residences, and some of which remain on the National Register of Historic Places.
[2] Among his works were meetinghouses of the LDS Church and other civic buildings.