1967:

“Hairy Hippies Offered Trim,” reads a headline in the Vancouver Sun. “Hairy city hippies with shoulder-length locks can get sheared for free by a city barber who says he owes them a favour.”

“It’s the least I can do after the way the hippies have boosted the hair-cutting trade,” claims Bill Partridge, the Vancouver barber who offers the service. “Look at it this way: until this hippy phase started there were a lot of respectable people who grew their hair long. Now, they have it cut short because they don’t want to be branded as hippies.”

Partridge proposes the creation of a barber’s committee, with the aim of providing the service on a large scale to the city’s hippie community. However, with one exception, the idea is soundly dismissed by both hippies and barbers alike, and less than ten haircuts are ever given.

“A lot of these hippies are intelligent people with a lot to offer society,” Partridge insists. ”But what employer is going to give them a job when they’ve got long hair? It’s a tragedy that they’re wasting their talents. If I could get a few of them in the chair and give them free haircuts, they could start playing a useful part in society.”

IMAGE: Interior of a Barbershop aboard the “Empress of Canada”, circa 1933. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.