(Some modern sources list his official title as "Chief Minister", but that does not appear in parliamentary documents from the period and is apparently a more recent invention.)

Boyd had little involvement in public life until January 1870, when he was elected for St. Andrew's to the "Convention of Forty" (a parliament called by Louis Riel to decide the fate of the Red River Colony).

With the end of the rebellion and the subsequent incorporation of Manitoba as a Canadian province (July 15, 1870), Lieutenant Governor Adams George Archibald (1870–1872) named Boyd as his Provincial Secretary.

Archibald considered Boyd to be acceptable to the French population of the province, as well as to its English-speaking "mixed-blood" Anglo-Metis residents (i.e. persons of British and aboriginal descent).

Archibald, the real Premier, frequently determined matters of policy without seeking advice from his ministers.