After 37 years, Robbie McEvoy is laying down her scissors and closing Robbie’s Inlet Barber Shop because of health issues unrelated to COVID-19. At this point, she has no plans for the space.
Retiring wasn’t an easy choice for someone who has been cutting other people’s hair since she was 13. “It was in my blood,” McEvoy said. “My aunt and older sister were both hairdressers, but I was a tomboy and I found men easier to talk to, so I chose to be a barber instead.”
When she was 17, she graduated from Lac La Biche High School, obtained her licence and began working professionally, renting a chair in an Edmonton barbershop. She might have remained there had it not been for a holiday on the Sunshine Coast. “I fell in love with Sechelt and decided I wanted to live here. Everything fit – the natural beauty, the ocean, the sky, the trees.”
It took a while to make her dream a reality, but in 1983 she moved to the Coast with her husband and their son, Rory, and opened her own barbershop in a former fish locker – part of what is now the Galiano Market. Eventually, she purchased Jorgenson’s Barber Shop on the same block, but by then, she and her husband had divorced and she had become a single parent.
Among McEvoy’s first customers were people from the shíshálh Nation. “We had an instant, caring connection,” she said. “I learned early on not to ask them a lot of questions and to accept that what they give you is enough. In return, I was invited to their homes and their ceremonies. I felt like part of their family.” She credits her father for teaching her how to listen and to earn her customers’ trust. “He was a great humanitarian who cared about people. By listening without comment or judgment to what customers were saying, I was giving them a service that was more than just cutting hair. I was being a witness to their lives.”
One day, artist and teacher Kevin McEvoy came into the shop. Turned out, he and Robbie were both from the same part of Alberta and it was even possible that she had cut his hair in Edmonton. This time, they didn’t let love slip away, and soon became a couple.
In 1991, Robbie opened Robbie’s Inlet Barber Shop on Wharf Street. She had designed the bright, spacious studio complete with outside barber pole and sign and filled it with plants and Kevin’s artwork. Later she added a line of jewelry they developed together. “It began with these copper panels that had lined the coolers in the fish plant. I thought they were magical. “
“They looked like gold,” Kevin said. One of their first pieces was a pair of earrings that he designed. “We called them Regatta – little sails that hang from your ears.”
But it was cutting hair and listening to her customers that fulfilled Robbie the most, and though she is closing her shop, she will not forget their stories.
– By Rosella Leslie
