Retirement? Why?!!

"I have no hobbies. I tried golf; I hated it. I tried curling; I hated it."
"I don't call them clients. I call them my girlfriends."
"I affect how you're going to look for the next week or the next month. So we have to have a bond, a trust."
"I had a lady, her hair went green. She wasn't happy. But that was thirty years ago."
"If you have beautiful grey hair and want to colour it, I will talk you out of it."
"This is heaven. Owning this place [his own beauty parlour] is like I won the lottery."
Murray Shaikin, 70, Ottawa, Murray's Hair

Murray Shaikin, 70, has been styling hair for over 50 years and he’s had some of his clients for over 40 years. He’s so dedicated to his customers that for some he’ll drive to their retirement home every week to bring them to his salon. Client Peggy McDonald has her husband, Robert, left, drive her to the Richmond Road salon. Wayne Cuddington/Ottawa Citizen

This man of gracious temperament and skilled hands has been doting on women for longer than he has been married to one. A not unusual situation, since many men do enjoy the company of women and eventually marry one of those he most admires. Murray Shaikin, originally from Montreal, which is where he received his academic hairdressing credentials as a very, very young man, has been primping and colouring, curling and styling women's hair for 53 years.

Some of his clients, he says, have been as faithful to him as he has been to them, and he throws around figures of 30 and 40 years, and one woman in particular who has been having her hair done by him for 51 years. Now that's loyalty. But little wonder, since this man reciprocates in a way that none others do. Take, for example, some of his clients aged 91, 93, 90 and 88. What other hairdresser in town will do house visits?

Murray Shaikin, 70, has had some of his clients for over 40 years. For some, like Audrey Henry, 88, he’ll drive to her retirement home every week to bring her to his salon. Wayne Cuddington/Ottawa Citizen

Better yet what other hairdresser will run a special valet service, picking up these very particular and special long-time clients, delivering them to the salon, and returning them home when their hair has been done? In fact, that valet is Mr. Shaikin himself, taking special pains to provide his services to special women. His wife presumably doesn't mind, nor do their two grown children. She might shrug her metaphorical shoulders, sighing 'it's a living'.

A living her husband pursued for what most people might consider a lifetime. And in an age when doctors no longer make house calls, he still does. And for his efforts his loyal clients represent generations; grandmother, mother, daughter for example. There is one family for whom he has styled five generations of haircuts. Weddings, family celebrations, even wakes.

Over that half-century and more of personal hair care, Mr. Shaikin plied his beloved trade out of nine different salons. One at which he worked for 27 years. Until he was able to open his own salon, finally. Murray's Hair. Some of his long-time clients feel sufficiently at home in his establishment to take up a broom and tidy up the floor on occasion, while awaiting their turn for his familiar ministrations transforming their hair from !eh! to !wow!

He is Jewish, many of his clients are not, but they invite him to share Christmas celebrations; his family and theirs. After all, they've been together for so long as hairdresser extraordinaire and appreciative clients that they've been witness to one another's life unfolding, feeling comfortable in one another's presence, and trusting and appreciating each other.