Straight Outta Rutland

Take a quick browse through the comments section on almost any news story about Rutland, and a familiar theme emerges.

Rutland is Kelowna’s most maligned neighbourhood: it has a reputation for being “low-rent,” dangerous and riddled with crime.

It’s a reputation that most long-time Rutlanders will fiercely dispute, even while they both perpetuate and embrace it.

For the people that live there, Rutland’s bad rap is a sore spot, a sarcastic in-joke, and a rallying cry that both brings them closer together and bolsters their pride in their community.

Why the bad rap?

According to Greg Greenough, who grew up in Rutland and owns a business there, Rutland had a dodgy reputation from as early on as the 70s.

In those days, he says, the community wasn’t much more than a bunch of farmland, and lots of young families were moving in.

As the population grew so did the size of Rutland Senior Secondary, and it wasn’t long before the “hicks” from Rutland and the “townies” from Kelowna Secondary School were butting heads.

Greenough says that as the “townies” grew up, their rivalries with the “hicks” evolved into the bad rap Rutland still carries today.

Rob Law, a long-time Rutland resident, agrees that whatever “rough” image Rutland has stems from early days, but that it isn’t justified anymore.

But was it justified then?

“I’m going to plead the fifth on that one,” he says with a hearty laugh. “I wasn’t one of those guys, so we’ll just leave it at that.”

Laurel D’Andrea, the executive director of the Uptown Rutland Business Association, admits that “Rutland’s always had that rougher edge, that tough-guy kind of component,” but says it’s largely a result of those high school rivalries still living in the minds adult grads.

Lots of people who grew up in Rutland stayed there, she says, but “they sit around and they tell their kids the stories about ‘when I was a kid and rah rah rah,’ and so the kids still have that mentality.”

Kelowna’s mayor, a born-and-raised Rutlander, likens Rutland’s relationship to the rest of Kelowna to that of a younger sibling.

“When they were two separate communities, Rutland was viewed by some as that smaller sibling, that younger sibling, and sometimes we don’t always think highly of our younger siblings, or treat them with the respect that they maybe deserve,” Colin Basran says.

D’Andrea also lays some of the blame for Rutland’s bad rap at the feet of the media.

She points out that Rutland is often splashed across headlines when bad things happen there, but the media doesn’t specify other neighbourhoods in the same way.

“The media are not segregating the mission, they’re not segregating the downtown,” she says.

Straight Outta Rutland

Law, Greenough and most other die-hard Rutlanders insist the community’s reputation isn’t deserved, especially these days. Nevertheless, they admit that reputation has come to define Rutland, both from without and within.

“Everybody in Rutland loves the fact that everybody else in town hates us,” Greenough says.

“The people from Rutland don’t argue it. It’s funny that the downtown people - the Kelowna people, the Mission people - think we’re all low rents. OK, sure. I don’t care, don’t come up here, then.”

That hard-done-by, pride-in-being-looked-down-on attitude is best exemplified in the “Straight Outta Rutland” shirts Greenough prints.

The shirts, featuring the slogan borrowed from California rappers N.W.A., started as a joke, but resonated with a community that’s grown close in the face of constant criticism.

Greenough says he initially printed one for his graduating nephew, but that as soon as people saw it requests for more started flooding in. He says he’s now printed more than 5000.

D’Andrea says that, for many, the shirts evoke a “sense of pride” that only someone who grew up in Rutland can understand.

“Some people the see the Straight Outta Rutland logo and read it thinking ‘eeew, Straight Outta’ Rutland,” with a negative connotation. But for the people who are straight outta Rutland, it’s a sense of pride for them,” she says.

Greenough agrees. He says people of all ages (from young kids to 100-year-old grandmas) buy the shirt, and points out that the slogan just wouldn’t work for any other community in Kelowna.

“I couldn’t do ‘Straight Outta’ Mission,’ or ‘Straight Outta’ Kelowna,’ it just doesn’t sound right,” he says.

“It’s our town: our area. You have to earn the right to wear it.”

They have each other’s backs

Rutlanders’ pride in their community is immediately evident when they start talking about why they live where they live.

While almost any Rutlander will tell you they have everything the city has - plus more - they seem most proud of the community spirit that runs through the place.

Law says he has tons of memories of hanging out with his neighbours, whom he says are non-pretentious folks that like to have fun and always have each other's backs.

“For the most part we’re blue collar, meat-and-potatoes kind of guys, that drink beer, barbecue, sit on a deck, laugh until the wee hours of the night, get up and do it all over again,” he says.

Stu Markle, another long-time Rutlander, says he’s still friends with people he met in grade school, guys who have lived there since they were kids and have never moved.

“I like Rutland, I fit in in rutland as well, because it’s Blue Collar workers, not white collar workers.” he says.

Basran says he’s always been proud to call himself a Rutlander, and thinks it’s an integral part of the City of Kelowna as a whole.

He said many days he would race home from school to play road hockey with his friends, and that it always felt safe for them to stay and play into the evening.

“Rutland residents, they have each other’s backs. You can walk down the street and you can say ‘hi,’ everybody knows each other,” Law adds. “I don’t think Kelowna can say the same.”

“All it takes is one neighbour to take their shirts off their back to help their neighbour down the street. We just have everybody’s back. There’s just proud, loyal, history behind [Rutland] that I’ve never seen anywhere else.

D’Andrea says many people don’t realize how rich in community Rutland is, and points out that “people who work and live here do so because they want to, not because they have to.”

She rhapsodizes about the quality of Rutland’s schools, its beautiful surroundings and the great people who live there.

“The schools are amazing here. Do you know how many incredible athletes, and how many kids have gone through civic awards and stuff like that that are Rutland students?” she asks.

“God, you go down Dougall Rd. and you have this beautiful view of Kelowna - we actually look down on Kelowna, people forget that,” she says with a laugh.

“Have some bad things happened here recently? Absolutely. Have bad things happened down at the water park in the city? Absolutely.”

Basran makes a similar argument.

“It bothers me that people speak of the community on occasion in a negative light,” he says. “Like any community there are good parts, and there are parts that need work, improving.”

Bad things happen all over, D’Andrea says, and the few bad things that happen in Rutland pale in comparison to the good the community has to offer.

“I love this community, I really do,” she says. “Are we perfect? Absolutely not, and nobody ever said we were.”