He was born in Burritt's Rapids, Ontario, the nephew of Edward Kidd, and was educated there and in Kemptville. Kidd was a manufacturer and wholesale merchant. He served in France with the Royal Regiment of Canada in 1915 and was wounded at Ypres. In 1920, he married Eva Richardson, the daughter of senator Henry Westman Richardson. Kidd was a member of Kingston city council from 1922 to 1926 and also served on the Kingston Board of Works. He won the Conservative nomination in Kingston after the incumbent Conservative, William Folger Nickle, resigned from the cabinet of Howard Ferguson in order to protest the government's decision to run for re-election on the platform of repealing the "Ontario Temperance Act" and allowing government controlled liquor sales. Kidd defeated Nickle who ran as a Prohibitionist candidate in the 1926 provincial election.