A Canadian In New Basford: Shottingham

Words: Rob Cutforth

Illustrations: Rob White

Sunday 01 April 2007

reading time: min, words

canadian in new basford

When I tell people from Nottingham that I moved here from Canada, they assume I’m the craziest man on earth...

I have been living here for a year and a half and I haven’t been shot, beaten up, mugged or even stabbed. If you listen to the media, this is quite an amazing feat, considering I live in Gun City. When I tell other Nottinghamians that I moved from Canada, they assume I’m the craziest man on earth. “You’re from Canada? What the hell are you doing here?”

So are Canadian cities little slices of utopia and Nottingham the seventh circle of Hell? No, we just have better PR. Not even mad cow disease, SARS and clubbing baby seals to death stop the tourists. I could tell you that I wear baby seal eyes for cufflinks, and you would still say something about our low crime, clean cities and beautiful scenery.

I’ll let you in on a little secret; gun crime in Canada is no lower than it is here. My home city of Calgary, a city of almost a million people (the same number as Notts) had 42 murders in 2006, mostly gun-related. If you ask any Canadian what they know about Calgary, they’ll tell you about the Stampede, a giant rodeothat attracts visitors from all over the world. You never hear a peep about the crime.

Crime is a fact of life for any city – it’s the ability to handle it that separates a city of culture from a city of depravity. A lot of damage has been done to Notts by the press and when it comes to misery, the British memory is long. You’re going to have to do something outlandish to shake the crime label. You are going to have to make friends with Robin Hood again.

I hear you groan. I’ve heard it before. It’s the same groan that we Calgarians emitted when other Canadians called us ‘cowboys’ because of the Stampede, because we wanted to be hip and metropolitan just like you. We don’t groan about the Stampede anymore, now that it makes $90M annually and (even though the city was smaller than greater Nottingham at the time) brought us the Olympics in 1988.

Other cities would kill for Robin Hood. Was I the only one that was pissed off that the newest Robin Hood statue was unveiled by Sean Bean in Sheffield? You know what the first thing everyone who flies into the Robin Hood airport says? “Why the hell isn’t this airport in Nottingham?” I know I am a new resident of this city, but let me be the first to say Sean Bean can kiss my big, fat, tights-covered, Nottinghamite ass.

We have to take Robin back immediately. We need to change the city logo to a bow and arrow, name a couple of streets after the man and host a world event like the World Archery Championships. Who would dare go against Nottingham in applying for it? You’d have Korean kids peeing their pants at the idea of coming to Nottingham.

We could use the press generated by the Archery Championships to turn it into an annual Robin Hood Arts festival celebrating all things Nottingham, making sure it doesn’t turn into some cheesy medieval fayre full of Goths and Dungeons and Dragons geeks. We can shake down any Gandalf wannabes at the gate and invoke an embargo on D20s and pewter figurines. It’s just crazy enough to work...

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