This article was adapted from one I wrote in 2018, for the NS Advocate.

For many Nova Scotian workers, Canada Day (Monday, July 1) is a general and paid holiday, as it is a statutory holiday in some provinces. If you are a union member, working under a collective agreement, you get paid for the holiday. However, if you work in nearly 70% of businesses and offices in Nova Scotia which are not unionized, here are the rules. 

You should get the day off as a paid holiday, if you worked 15 of the last 30 calendar days. You also must have worked your last scheduled shift just before the holiday, and your first scheduled shift right after the holiday. If you did not work the day before, or after because you had a sick day or a vacation day, you should still get paid for the holiday on Canada Day.  

Canada Day is a retail store closing day in Nova Scotia.  Large supermarkets, discount stores, hardware stores, malls, credit unions, clothing stores, and most offices and services must be closed. 

If your employer is a bar, gas station, restaurant, health club or tourist operation which is open on July 1, and you work that day, you are entitled to your normal pay for the day, plus time and one half for every hour you do work on July 1.   

However if you work on a farm, in real estate, if you sell cars or work on commission, if you work on a fishing boat —  you don’t get the holiday with pay.

Here is an exquisite poem “Do not wish me a happy Canada Day“, by Halifax poet Angela Bowden.

Painting at the top: Summer’s Day by Berthe Morisot (French, 1879). This painting is oil on canvas; Morisot was a French Impressionist painter. (Credit: National Gallery, London, UK)