John Fisher had his key in the door, ready to close his barber shop for the final time when a longtime customer rushed up to him.
“A customer drove from Ottawa to get his last haircut,” having rushed back to Barrie from the nation’s capital upon hearing that the shop was about to close, said the generational barber.
And although the customer, a now a federal government worker, had been coming into the downtown Fisher’s Barber Shop for 35 years, Fisher knows him only as Brad.
Fisher reopened, Brad took a familiar seat and after 42 years of barbering, Fisher gave his last haircut in his iconic business where three generations once worked.
The barber then finally did close up the shop for the last time and made his way back to his Elmvale-area farm, which he’s been running nearly as long as the Dunlop Street barber shop.
Word of last weekend’s closure, which Fisher suspects is the longest continuously run business in Barrie’s downtown, brought many notes of congratulations and memories on the Facebook page, If You Grew Up in Barrie You Remember.
Among them is self-described old soul Spenser Arksey, who happily calls Barrie his lifelong home.
“It’s sad to see a longtime staple of Barrie disappear,” said the 29-year-old health-care worker, who was first attracted to the shop seven years ago by its classic barber pole.
That pole — a throwback to a time when the barber shop served as a leisurely male hangout — was a true reflection of what he found inside: an old-style, folksy atmosphere where men would gather, sometimes just to chat. It was a tribute, said Arksy, to small-town Barrie and the people who once populated it.
“A lot of the time I’d go in and we’d talk about the news of the day, or fishing,” he said. "Sometimes not even for a haircut, just for a chat.”
Fisher kept things simple and old school.
It was walk-in business only, no appointments. Anyone who tried to call would be out of luck; Fisher’s Barber Shop has never had a phone. If he, or anyone in the shop needed to make a call, the phone booth just outside on the sidewalk accommodated. That is until a couple of years ago when the booth was removed, which roughly coincided with the time Fisher got his first cellphone.
Fisher and the shop hearkened to another time when things were simpler, said Mike Metzger, who, with his sister, Bev, has been running their jewelry business, Metzger Studio, four doors down from the barber shop for the past 21 years.
“I think he’s the only guy in town that still does traditional barbering with the straight edge and the foam,” said Metzger, a lifelong Barrie boy. “I remember getting a haircut there one time and he had the baby powder going and the big old whippy brush from way back.
“I remember going home and feeling how smooth my neck was," he added. "I don’t think I’ve ever felt it that smooth.”
Fisher said it was time to close. He saw the writing on the wall several years ago when patios starting dominating the main street in the core and storefront parking became next to impossible — a problem for Fisher’s clientele, many of whom are now elderly.
Two years ago, street construction blocked traffic and just as merchants were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, the pandemic hit.
By the time he was finally able to reopen the shop, many people had become used to their untended coifs, new beards and home cuts. Customers weren’t waiting in line outside.
The Fisher’s Barber Shop sign was first posted by his dad, Bill, on Owen and Dunlop streets in 1955 when he moved to Barrie from Toronto, where his father, Fisher’s grandfather, had his own shop and worked as a barber dating back to 1927.
In 1960, Bill moved the shop to his own building on Collier Street, where he created the largest barber shop north of Toronto with seven chairs.
“The first day that they opened, my dad did 100 haircuts that day himself,” recalled Fisher. “The only reason he knew that was because haircuts were $1 a shot and he had $100 in his till at the end of the day.”
Within a couple of years, Fisher’s grandfather started working at the shop as well, cutting hair in Barrie from 1962 until he passed away in the spring of 1971.
In 1977, the building was sold to Mallory Insurance, which still occupies it, and the shop moved to its last location on Dunlop Street East. Fisher joined his dad’s business in 1978 after trying his hand at milking cows, labouring for bricklayers, working at the city’s Woolworth's store, and selling insurance.
“I never dreamt in a million years I was going to be a barber,” Fisher recalled. “And then one day I thought there must be something to this barbering. My dad and mother raised four boys and we always were well-dressed, we ate well, we lived in a new home, we drove a good car, and I thought maybe there’s something to this.”
But the draw for Fisher, was the people: “You met a multitude of people from every walk of life you could imagine.”
And he could contrast that to the solitary life of a farmer, which he took up in the 1980s after lifelong exposure to farming through extended family and that he continues to this day.
“I’ve had quite a ride,” Fisher said with a heavy heart.
Added Arksy: “I’m really going to miss that place.”
