Wrigley came to Edmonton from Toronto, where he had been minister to the School of Religion at the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto.

A native of Albany, N.Y., he had a science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Divinity degree from St. Laurence University in Canton, N.Y. At UCE he was noted for his strong sermons, including a series of four sermons on the Vietnam War in 1967. Wrigley says two church members resigned in protest over the Vietnam sermons, but the church board supported him.

After leaving UCE in 1970, Wrigley moved to rural Alberta where he did many different jobs, including oil rig worker, electrician and weekly columnist for the Edson Leader, but was never again a Unitarian minister.

Wrigley spent his last years in Edmonton and was a Quaker. He died in 2011. In his 1995 memoir, Hopeless Romantic and Other Stories, he writes: “Being a Unitarian minister was in many ways the perfect job for me. My abandoning my profession might then be seen as tragic. On the other hand, my search for another vocation ... has had its own rich rewards and satisfactions.”

© 2010 Unitarian Church of Edmonton