TODAY I HAD my hair cut at one of the many hip Toronto salons, and I found myself recalling the many haircuts I’ve had. Long ago, when my youthful hair was of unadulterated pepper, a haircut meant a visit to the barber. I don’t know that the word style was of any application to the trade, and in either case what a boy got from the barber of the 1950s to the early ’70s was always the same, at every visit and for every boy. I can’t imagine my mid-century european barbers, who had wielded a scissors and straight-razor through war and possibly also the Depression, submitting to the modish term hair stylist. But then, these were the days before everything, even life itself, became a style.

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