the first Edmonton City Council (Edmonton had hitherto been a town). He finished second of seventeen candidates in the aldermanic race, and was elected to a two-year term. He resigned in 1906, before the completion of his term. Provincial politics Early provincial career In 1905, Boyle ran in Alberta's inaugural provincial election as the Liberal candidate in Sturgeon, where he defeated Conservative Frank Knight by a wide margin. Boyle served as Deputy Speaker in the 1st Alberta Legislative Assembly. (To focus on government affairs, Boyle resigned as Edmonton alderman on May 7, 1906, and a by-election was held to fill his empty seat.) During his first term, Boyle supported the selection of Edmonton (over rival Calgary) as the new province's capital, and supported the Liberal government of Alexander Cameron Rutherford in its decision to borrow money to finance the creation of Alberta Government Telephones (abandoning its usual "pay as you go" approach). Boyle predicted that "Alberta, the first to undertake [a provincial government telephone system] will become a model for every province in the Dominion." He also sided with the government in its rejection of Conservative demands that it build and operate railways, as he felt that doing so would not be viable as long as the trunk lines were in private hands. He enthusiastically backed private construction of railways, however, and greeted the announcement of the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway—which was to run northward from Edmonton to Lac la Biche and later Fort McMurray—with what historian L. G. Thomas describes as "an extravagant eulogy...[speaking] of Lac la Biche as another Lake Louise, of Pullmans running from New Orleans to the Arctic circle, and of northern Alberta as a second Cobalt region." Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal The Rutherford government was comfortably re-elected in the 1909 election; Boyle himself was acclaimed in Sturgeon. Shortly after the elections, rumours began to spread that all was not well with the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway (A&GWR), to which the government had given loan guarantees and on whose behalf it had sold bonds in the London bond market. When the new legislature convened in February 1910, Boyle tabled a list of eleven questions for the government about the A&GWR. Rutherford, Minister of Railways as well as Premier, duly answered them in writing. Boyle found these answers unsatisfactory, and on February 21 gave notice of a motion to expropriate the A&GWR's bond