Roxanne Wideen had worked for Tourism Calgary for 37 years when her employment ended without cause. Her long service was not in dispute. The dispute was about what that service meant under a termination formula added years after she first joined the organization.
Wideen’s original agreement did not contain a termination clause. More than nine years into the employment relationship, she was promoted and signed another agreement. That later contract introduced a formula providing one month of notice or severance for each completed year of service. The contract also acknowledged that her employment was continuing and referred to her original start date, but the termination language did not expressly say which date should be used to calculate completed years of service.
The Applications Judge read the formula as beginning when the later agreement was signed. On that interpretation, Wideen was entitled to 27 months under the contract. She argued on appeal that her years of service should run from her original hiring date, which would have produced 36 months.
The Court of King’s Bench upheld the 27 month calculation. The court focused on the wording and structure of the later agreement. It concluded that the parties introduced a new contractual termination entitlement when that agreement was signed and that the contract did not objectively communicate an intention to apply the new formula to the decade of service that came before it.
That distinction matters because employment contracts often evolve as roles, compensation and responsibilities change. A later contract can govern termination rights even when the employment relationship itself began much earlier. But this decision should not be read as a general rule that earlier service can always be ignored. The result turned on the language of the agreement before the court and the way the termination formula fit into the contractual history.
There’s also a practical drafting lesson. If an organization intends a formula to count service only from a new agreement date, saying so expressly is much safer than leaving the start point to implication. The same is true for employees reviewing a new agreement after years of service. A clause that looks generous in isolation can operate very differently depending on which service date feeds the calculation.
For HR teams, the case is a reminder that promotions and contract updates are not merely administrative events. They can reshape accrued expectations around termination. When a later agreement changes termination rights, the treatment of earlier service should be made explicit and reviewed carefully before the agreement is signed.
The decision is Wideen v Tourism Calgary (Calgary Convention & Visitors Bureau), 2026 ABKB 656. The Court upheld the contractual calculation of 27 months rather than the 36 months claimed by the employee.