The similarity to the Scottish flag reflects the province’s name, which is Latin for “New Scotland”. Nova Scotia was one of the few British colonies to be granted its own coat of arms, and the flag is the only one of the original Canadian provinces dating back to before confederation.
Despite continuous usage of the flag to represent Nova Scotia since 1858, the flag was recognized by the provincial government of Nova Scotia as the official provincial flag only in May 2013, but the Provincial Flag Act, after an eleven-year-old girl researching a project realized that no one had recognized the flag officially in 155 years of usage.