70 Years of Hair and Friendship

“I just made another friend,” he explains to his newest customer. “That’s why I’m here. If I didn’t have the barbershop, I wouldn’t see as many people. A lot of friends come here to talk about old times and all. It’s more or less of a hobby for me now and I still like to cut hair.”

A man – all his customers are men – walks in for a haircut but doesn’t sit down in the 50 or 60-year-old barber chair – the third. They talk first without the usual production line setting of today’s hair salons.

Goulden says he doesn’t earn much with his seven days per week morning service but that’s okay. He charges $3 for a children’s haircut. “A lot of the older guys think $4 is a lot for 10 minutes work. I think that’s quite a price myself. Others say I’m too cheap so I say if you want to give me more I’ll take it.” He laughs.

The little shop, a former pump house moved to his property on Thomas Road from the Lake Rodney watershed, is definitely inviting.

The walls are adorned with hunting trophies, photographs, and other memorabilia while numerous gifts presented to him by customers over the years are proudly displayed on a shelf and throughout the shop.

Goulden, a childhood Church Over resident - he says Churchover is an incorrect spelling – started cutting hair when he was only 15 years old. He is self-taught plus picked up tips from his father.

Throughout much of his life, he “always” held two or three jobs at a time ranging from lobster fishing and barbering to his full-time job as a Certified Nursing Assistant at Roseway Hospital, where he started in the “detention building for Tuberculosis. “They locked up the positive cases so it wouldn’t spread,” he says, adding with a smile: “I never put my fingers in my mouth after the TB.”

He didn’t go to barbering school but it didn’t stop him from landing a good contract.

He cut hair for 27 years once, and sometimes twice per week at the armed forces base CFS Barrington in Baccaro Point. It was called RCAF Station Barrington when he started and he made the slow drive at the time after working all night at the hospital. “I made a lot of friends out there,” Goulden says.

He also provided his services at CFB Shelburne for over two years. His present-day customers, new and old, cover the county.

He also visits Roseway Manor, Surf Lodge Nursing Home and Roseway Hospital in addition to the homes of clients who can no longer make the trip easily. “You’d be surprised how many people can’t get out of the house and appreciate a haircut,” Goulden says.

He says life has changed a lot since his first customer’s hair fell to the floor. For example, he remembers walking across a frozen Shelburne Harbour and when he and his father couldn’t haul traps in early December because the ice was too thick.

He also remembers hauling huge cod out of the harbour in addition to crowds of people surrounded by numerous businesses during the war years. “It’s hard to believe it’s all gone,” he says wistfully.

Goulden loves birds, raccoons and rabbits, having cared for orphaned raccoons for about 20 years. “I used to feed them with a bottle,” he says. As he talks, rabbits are hopping around the yard.

In the meantime, however, he plans to keep cutting hair and to keep his prices in the past. “As long as I can get my hands up I’ll keep doing it and my eyesight is good.”