Canada’s Ocean Playground: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Living, Working, and Playing in Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia is a peninsula almost entirely bathed by the Atlantic Ocean, revered by urban visitors from eastern Canada and the United States. This Canadian province’s beaches and coastal villages have drawn the attention of tourists, as well as economic authorities who have been promoting its natural and cultural virtues for more than a century (Hollinshead, 2009). The desire to exploit Nova Scotia’s tourism potential is evident through various marketing initiatives, including the slogan “Canada’s Ocean Playground”, printed on license plates since 1923 (McKay, 1994). Indeed, following decades of socioeconomic decline related to out-migration and the post-industrial transition to services-based activities, the promotion of tourism and immigration are currently strategic priorities for the province.

In December 2020, Tourism Nova Scotia in collaboration with the provincial government launched a campaign to attract remote workers as new residents. One year later, the province reached the demographic milestone of one million residents, marking a socioeconomic turning point. This promotional strategy and the sociospatial transformations which have accompanied it are consistent with Sigler and Wachsmuth’s (2020) conceptualisation of transnational gentrification, albeit related to interprovincial rather than international flows of lifestyle migrants. I argue that by leveraging the relative affordability of housing and the quality of life in this maritime province, this state-led marketing campaign overshadows the housing insecurity which has been exacerbated in recent years.

I aim to uncover the sociospatial injustices that “Canada’s Ocean Playground” both reveals and conceals by conducting a critical discourse analysis of promotional materials related to living, working, and playing in Nova Scotia. In the (post)pandemic context of remote work, counter-urban flows, and widespread housing insecurity, my analysis raises questions about the right to housing in a tourism-based region, and about the “right to be rural” in Atlantic Canada in the present historical moment (Foster & Jarman, 2022).