Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

In America, boot (only it is called a shoe) shining is a special rite, and it is performed outside the home in a "Parlour." These Parlours are often elaborate affairs, attached to a tobacconist, or to the vendor of American magazines, who is also a tobacconist; but quite frequently they exist alone on their own profits. In these Parlours, and in an armchair on a raised throne, one sits while an expert with brushes, polish, rags and secret varnishes, performs miracles on one's shoes. It is an art that justifies itself, but the fact that so many Canadian roads off the main streets are mere strips of dusty unmetalled nature explains the necessity of so many shops devoted to this business; that, and the dearth and independence of servants.

The Candy Stores are bright and elaborate places also. There are so many of them, and their wares are so ingenious and varied, that one almost fancies that eating candy is one of the national industries. All candy stores have an ice cream soda section, where cream ices of an amazing virtuosity and number, and called, for some reason I have not discovered, "Sundaes," can be had.

The Drug Stores have an ice cream section, always; small and pretty ante-rooms, with a chintz air and chintz chairs, where these delightful ices, compounded of cream and all kinds of fruits or syrups, and dubbed with romantic names, such as "Angel's Sigh," and "Over the Top," are absorbed by citizens with a regularity that seems to point to a definite racial impulse.

One expects to find an ice cream counter in a drug store, because one comes to realize that there is little within the range of human possibility that the drug store does not sell. It sells soap and toothpaste and drugs, as one would expect; it sells magazines and fountain-pens and ink, cameras and clocks. It sells sweets and walking-sticks and postage stamps and stationery. It sells everything. It even sells whiskey. It is, indeed, the only place in the Continent of the Dry where spirits of any sort can be obtained, not freely, of course, but through the full ceremonial of the law, and by means of a doctor's certificate.

And then the Barbers' Temples. When I talk of barbers' shops as temples, I speak with the feeling of awe these austere and airy places of whiteness and marble, glass and mosaic, silver and electricity impressed me. There seems to be something measured and profound in the way the Canadian goes to these conventicles, in the frequency of his going, and in the solemnity of the act that he undergoes when there.

There are so many of these shops, and they are always so crowded that it seems to me the Canadian makes his attendance on the barber, not an accident, but a solemn habit; an occasion with not a little ritual in it. And the barber has the same air.

When a Canadian puts the top of himself into the hands of the barber, he gets, not a hair-cutting, but a process. He is placed in a chair of leather and electro-plate, standing well out to the middle of a pure white floor. As a chair it is the kindlier brother of the one the dentist uses; it has all the tips, tilts and abrupt upheavals, but none of the other's exactions.

It is tipped and tilted and swung hither and thither by a white-vested priest as he goes austerely step by step through a definite service of the head. It is an intricate formulary that includes the close cropping of the temples, shaving behind the ears, shaving the back of the neck (unless you show you belong to a feebler stock, and protest), swathing the head in hot towels, oil shampooing, massaging, "violet raying" and an entire orchestration of other methods of making the hair worthy.

And the barber is not a mere human being with clippers. He is a hierophant with a touch of dogmatic infallibility. He does not suggest, "Would you like a scalping massage, sir? I recommend it..." and so on; he tells you out of the calm cloud of his reticence: "I'm going to give you a Marshwort Electrolysis, and after that Yellow Cross Douch for that nasty nap in your hair."

It takes a strong-willed fellow to say "No" to that attack of assertion, especially as you feel that you are shattering the entire tradition of Canada, where the whole elaborate process is just an ordinary hair-cut.