From the barber chair: Our haircutting heritage

Just in Time local history series

Prom season will be well underway at local high schools by the time Advocate readers peruse this issue – and not far behind will be graduation. Both occasions will call for hair to be neatly clipped, combed, and otherwise done up by barbers and hairstylists; skilled professionals who carry on a trade that has a long history in our community.

Once known as the “tonsorial arts,” barbering has evolved considerably over time – and yet there remains something timeless about a traditional barbershop. These places not only offered haircuts and shaving services, they had a social and even political function, too. Like storekeepers and ministers, local barbers had their finger on the pulse of the community through countless interactions with customers of every description. (Stephen Leacock captured the spirit of small-town barbershops in his account of Jefferson Thorpe, the barber in Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town: “The conversation, of course, was the real charm of the place,” said Leacock’s narrator of the shop. “You see, Jefferson’s forte, or specialty, was information. He could tell you more things within the compass of a half-hour’s shave than you get in days of labourious research in an encyclopedia.”)

Though Leacock’s portrayal is idyllic, a visit to a 19th century barbershop could well be a painful experience. Possessing a set of razors, barbers were frequently tasked with bloodletting – the withdrawal of blood from someone to cure disease. This archaic practice gradually fell out of fashion, but its legacy would live on in the form of the ubiquitous barber pole; the red stripes signifying blood, and the white stripes signifying the bandages.

The barber pole would have been a familiar sight to local citizens within 10 years of Lindsay’s incorporation as a community; at least two barbers were plying their art in town by 1867. One was Benjamin Holmes, an African American who had been born into slavery in Richmond, Virginia. Holmes arrived in Lindsay around 1862 and would operate a “hair cutting, shaving & shampooing saloon” at various locations downtown through 1869. (The full story of Holmes can be found in the recently-published book, Reflections on Old Victoria County.) Arthur Fields, another Black barber, cut hair and sold groceries to Lindsay residents through the early 1870s.

Other barbers followed, with one Louis Archambault being among the better-known “tonsorial artists” of the period. Born in Quebec around 1849, Archambault was by the 1890s operating one of the best-patronized barbershops in downtown Lindsay. Those looking for a haircut or shave at Archambault’s in 1898 would, according to the Canadian Post, find a shop “fitted up with modern comfortable chairs, handsome cup racks, large mirrors, screen doors, etc., all of which tend to the comfort and convenience of his customers.” When Archambault died in 1911, his obituary noted that he had “gained the good will and esteem of a large circle of friends” over a 30-year period.

Many of Archambault’s former customers would have transferred their business to other barbers, for whom there was certainly no shortage of work. A couple of years after Archambault passed away, the high cost of living saw local haircutting prices rise from 15 cents to 25 cents – and those looking to get a trim under the old prices were quick to take advantage of them while they could. “Every tonsorial artist in town was kept busy from morn till night and the pompadours were slaughtered right and left, and strewn on the barber shop floors,” recounted the Watchman Warder on Aug. 7, 1913.

Perhaps the most famous barbershop customer in this area during the 20th century was Leslie Frost, MPP and former premier of Ontario. It has been noted by Frost’s biographers that he tried to view public policy from the perspective of the barber chair in Lindsay – and this was no mere apocryphal tale either, says longtime Eldon Township resident Ian Burney. “It was at Jim Nicholls’ barbershop in Woodville that I first heard the story,” Burney recalls. “Jim told me and all the men who were in the shop that Leslie’s test for every new policy being considered by the Progressive Conservatives was what the men at the barbershop on the main street of Lindsay would think of it. If they were favourable, he went ahead with it. If the fellows in the barbershop turned it down (or, more likely, if he thought they would turn it down), Leslie would quietly drop the idea.”

Frost died in 1973 – some six months after a young man named Wally Nugent began apprenticing under John Eakins, Frost’s successor twice removed, who worked as a hairstylist prior to running for office. When Nugent began on Hallowe’en of 1972, the principal barbers in town were Ward Clarke, Kelly Doyle, Lionel Gervais, Herb Hardy, Spencer Norris, Tom Quibell, and Frank Speers, among others. “William Street North was a hive of barbers; there were five shops in the one block,” Nugent says.

Nugent has witnessed many changes in his industry over the last half century – from the appearance of long hairstyles in the 1970s and 1980s, to barbers being allowed to set their own rates, to more women entering the profession. Yet one of Nugent’s observations seems to have remained consistent over the years: “barbers in general have very colourful personalities.”