William (“Bill”) Henry Boyd, Vic's father, was born in Campbellford, Ontario in 1898. His father ran a hotel in the town. When Bill was 16, he went west to Regina and joined the North West Mounted Police. A photo of him on his horse near Lake Louise was used on postcards for the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The First World War spurred him to leave the force in 1917 to join the Royal Flying Corps. Although Canada did not have its own unique air force until 1924, over 5000 Canadian pilots served with the RFC in World War I. Bill became a fighter pilot and flew combat missions over the Western Front. He shot down two enemy aircraft and was shot down once, parachuting to safety. He also claimed to have been in a dog fight with the Red Baron. In England he met Anne Elizabeth Adam, a girl his age who had been born in Ayrshire, Scotland but was living with relatives in England. They married and Bill brought his bride to Canada. He remained with his squadron which was stationed near Ottawa and a son, William John Robertson, was born in 1919.

Vic came into the world on February 16, 1921 in Renfrew Country, Ontario. Bill's squadon disbanded that year and his policing history helped to land him a job with the Ontario Provincial Police. The family was living in Toronto in 1923 when another son, Thomas Charles was born. Bill became superintendent of the OPP's garage which was at 18 Surrey Place on today's Ontario Police Memorial Park, near Queen's Park, and the family lived in the flat upstairs.

In late July 1927, young Thomas came down with rheumatic fever. Several days later a doctor was dispatched from the Sick Children's Hospital, which was three blocks away on College Street. By that point septicemia had set in and there was nothing that the doctor could do. Three year old Thomas passed away at home on August 7.

The next month Vic began school at Wellesley. He suffered several childhood ailments including mumps, scarlet fever and he had his tonsils and adenoids removed. The family grew with the addition of another brother, Bruce Howard, in 1929.

Vic graduated from Wellesley in 1935 and continued to Harbord Collegiate. Although not on a school team, he enjoyed playing many sports – baseball, hockey, tennis, swimming, softball, archery, boxing and bowling. He spent three years in the school's cadet corps. Once he had his junior matriculation, he left Harbord and entered Jesse Ketchum's business course from which he graduated in 1939.

From 1934 until he left school, Vic had been a part time clerk and delivery boy for a drug store on Yonge Street. He quit that job to become a junior ledger keeper at the Pape and Queen Street East branch of the Bank of Nova Scotia.

When war was declared in September 1939, Bill left the OPP to join the RCAF where he became a squadron leader. The family moved out of the flat above the OPP garage to an apartment at 28 Macpherson Avenue. Vic decided to follow in his father's footsteps and enlisted in the RCAF on August 22, 1940. His family connection likely got him into the service as at the time it was only taking licenced pilots and university graduates for the aircrew program. Vic was determined to be a pilot as his father had been in the last war. Asked if he wanted to return to his banking job after the war, he responded, “not particularly.”

The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan was in its infancy and in 1940 was a patchwork of a few training facilities, nothing like the training machine that it would become the next year with numerous schools and airfields across Canada and defined curricula for each course for the Commonwealth airmen who would train in Canada. Vic did his basic training at the bombing and gunnery school in Jarvis, Ontario near Port Dover. He returned to Toronto to start his initial training on November 11 at the RCAF school near Eglinton Avenue and Avenue Road. Here the recruits had instruction in mathematics, armament, flight theory, meteorology and other related subjects before final testing. They were also took psychiatric tests and spent time in a Link trainer, a flight simulator which, along with recording the recruits' instrument progress, it could also simulate stalls and spins.