Diving into Canada’s Ocean Playground: Estu and Plove Meet Richard Powers

HARP The People’s Press is located in Canada’s Ocean Playground — Nova Scotia (www.tryhealingarts.ca).  This slogan has been used on Nova Scotia’s license plates since 1972, coined by Alistair J. Campbell (1886-1960), who headed up Nova Scotia Tourist Association for over twenty years.

In the last week of 2024, I (Dorothy Lander aka Plove – Piping Plover) was immersing myself in best-selling author Richard Powers’ latest novel Playground.  After my co-publisher John Graham-Pole (aka Estu – Estuary) had finished reading it, he placed Playground on my bedside pile of priority reads.  In the last week of 2024 (December 29), we both listened to Sunday Magazine on CBC Radio; Pulitzer Prize recipient Richard Powers joined host Piya Chattopadhyay to talk about Playground and the little we humans know about the underwater world. Through his four human characters, Powers tells a hopeful story about the existential threats facing us today.  His story invites readers to feel kinship with humans whose ways of being and making meaning in the world are contrary to our own.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/9.6522822

In March 2024, Estu and Plove launched their podcast series Estu and Plove Find Their Voice to play out the existential crisis they were facing in Antigonish Harbour in northern Nova Scotia. https://tryhealingarts.ca/harp-podcast/

Reading Playground and listening to Richard Powers talk about play across generations and across species, inspired us to revisit Estu and Plove through the lens of play. Piya referenced Dutch historian Johan Huizinga and his book Homo Ludens published in 1938; he presents evidence that play is older than culture, older than civilization.  The more-than-human species engage in play.   He saw all human activity “rooted in the primaeval soil of play”; Estu and Plove channeling Richard Powers are rooted in the primaeval ocean of play.  By virtue of their very names, Estu and Plove are endlessly playful throughout the 12 podcasts; they play with each other; they play with marine biologist Bob Bancroft; they play with Porpoise Past (aka Porps) played by Sara Armstrong; and they play with Elder John R Prosper of Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation as he reads the rosary for his ancestors in unmarked graves at Antigonish Harbour.  https://tryhealingarts.ca/honourable-harvest/

The island of Makatea in the middle of the Pacific, the site of French Polynesia colonization and a development success until the phosphate mines closed in 1966, is Richard Powers’ playground and as he said to Piya Chattapadhyay “a microcosm of the human project.”   Antigonish Harbour, where Estu and Plove find their voice, is also a microcosm, in which the more-than-human are the players.  Richard Powers introduces Artificial Intelligence (AI) named Profunda who can answer the islanders’ questions before they vote on the Californian consortium’s proposal to bring industry and jobs to the island. Not a vote to decide on the application for a commercial oyster fishery in Antigonish Harbour but rather Nova Scotia’s supposedly unbiased regulator, the Aquaculture Review Board (ARB), was given this power. In Playground, the prospect of livelihoods, hospitals, and educational institutions so islanders would not have to leave to secure their future, were highlighted in the Californians’ proposal to the citizens of Makatea.

The ARB took into account job creation, the impact on recreational boating and the navigational routes of lobster fishermen to support the decision of the provincial Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture (NSDFA) a year ago (January 6, 2024) to award a family-owned commercial oyster fishery—23000 cages spread over 90 acres of Antigonish Harbour.   The underwater activity was dismissed: no environmental impact study, no respect for the Species at Risk act with respect to the Piping Plover, no consideration of the impact on the eel fishery sacred to the Mikmaq, and no respect for the proximity to ancient Mi’kmaw burial grounds. 

Richard Powers names some forms of adult human play: playing music; playing the stock market; playing God; putting on plays.   Huizinga states that all play is a voluntary act: “play to order is no longer play.”   Antigonish is a hockey town so we present the “power play” of ice hockey to shed deeper metaphorical meaning on the involuntary play that presents in Makatea and Antigonish Harbour. In ice hockey, a “power play” means one team has a temporary numerical advantage because the opposing team has had one or more players removed from play on account of a penalty. In business, politics, or life in general, a “power play” is when someone earns some advantage over another through the strategic, often corrupt, use of power or influence.

The unexplored depths of the ocean and hitherto unknown species and sites of shipwrecks are the playground in Powers’ story, whereas the shores and surface of the ocean are the focus of Nova Scotia tourism and the ARB decision in favour of a commercial oyster fishery in Antigonish Harbour. 

I am posting this commentary on New Year’s Day, the day that several communities in Nova Scotia organize a Polar Bear Dip to ring in the new year, including the community of Antigonish Harbour.  Sheer play:  participants dress up as Celtic Warriors; guitar accompaniment cheers on the brave. 

Piya Chattapadhyay asked Richard Powers if he had hope for the human project.  He responded that hope has to give way to commitment.  To restore the world and a future for humanity, we humans need to put control of our cultural institutions into play.    As publishers of a multi-media publishing house dedicated to the arts for health equity, we commit to bringing Estu and Plove back into play in order to recreate childlike awe for the natural world and for the community of living things.