Colonists from the
Kingdom of Scotland first settled in modern-day
Nova Scotia after 1621, when (The sixth
King of Scots and the first
King of England and
Ireland to bear that name) conferred the land to
William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling, via
royal charter and gave it the Latin name for "New Scotland". Four years later, the colony was granted its
own coat of arms by
Charles I, with the emblem first recorded at the
Court of the Lord Lyon in
Edinburgh on May 28, 1625. Towards the end of that decade, the Scots established two short-lived settlements which were ultimately unsuccessful. Both the
Kingdom of France and the
Kingdom of England sought to take advantage of the failure of the Scottish colony and the territory subsequently changed hands between those two kingdoms repeatedly throughout the remainder of the 17th and into the early 18th centuries. The
Peace of Utrecht in 1713 saw the Kingdom of France permanently relinquish mainland Nova Scotia to the recently created
Kingdom of Great Britain. however vexillologist
Whitney Smith opines that these ambiguous accounts are doubtful. Nova Scotia later acquiesced to
a federation with the other colonies of
New Brunswick and the
United Province of Canada in 1867 under the
British North America Act to form the
Dominion of
Canada. However, the
College of Arms, the
heraldic authority in
England, was apparently unaware of the earlier
grant of arms to Nova Scotia in 1625 by the Lyon Court, the heraldic authority in
Scotland. Consequently,
Queen Victoria issued a Royal Warrant on May 26 of the following year, conferring a different coat of arms on the new province. This consisted of a
salmon and three
thistles. It was the first flag in the overseas
Commonwealth to be approved by royal charter – and is the oldest provincial flag in Canada. However, it is not the first Canadian provincial flag to be officially adopted, a distinction held by the
flag of Quebec, which was approved by the
Parliament of Quebec on March 7, 1950, two years after the order in council was announced. In a 2001 online survey conducted by the
North American Vexillological Association, Nova Scotia's flag ranked within the top sixth of
state,
provincial and territorial flags from
Canada, the
United States, and select current and former
territories of the United States. It finished in 12th place out of 72, and placed second among Canadian flags after Quebec. Twelve years later, the flag was officially recognized as the flag of the province under an Act of
Legislature. This came about after an eleven-year-old student from
Canso uncovered this aberration while conducting research for a school project. Unlike the flags of
British Columbia,
New Brunswick, and
Prince Edward Island – which are also provincial flags that are banner of arms – Nova Scotia's was never recognized as such under a provincial statute. The student contacted the
member of the Legislative Assembly representing her
electoral district,
Jim Boudreau, who consulted with the Legislative Library and other government bodies to ascertain that such a law was not on the books. He consequently introduced the
bill that became the
Provincial Flag Act after receiving
royal assent on May 10, 2013. The student and her family were invited to the House of Assembly that same month in acknowledgment of her efforts. ==Design==