Pete on
the fiddle
His real name is Maurice, but folks
around here just call him Pete.
»
Pete Mullaney started his haircutting career by horseback, cutting the neighbours’ hair near his family home in Fort Pelly, Saskatchewan. The year was 1930, and Pete was 10 years old.
Little did he know then, that haircutting and horses would
become life-long passions.
Nearly 80 years later, Mullaney is retired, but he’s not ready to
slow down. Haircuts, horses and music are still part of his life.
Mullaney ran Pete’s Barbershop and Salon in Okotoks for
nearly 40 years and was a fixture on the chuckwagon circuit for
35. People came to Pete’s for a haircut, a fiddle lesson, or both.
A cowboy and a fiddle on the shop’s exterior greeted pass-ersby at the McRae Street salon. In fact, although the building
has changed hands, the artwork is still there. Mullaney did cuts,
colours, men’s and women’s hair pieces and reflexology among
other things. He was advanced in trichology, the study of the
health of hair and the scalp. He also gave fiddle, banjo, mandolin and guitar lessons.
His laugh fills the room as he describes some of his adventures in hairstyling, from perms one curl at a time to allergic
reactions to hair colouring and men’s hairpiece misadventures.
Like the old general store, Pete’s was a place where people
would come for a chat. But Mullaney had a strict no-gossiping
policy in his shop. “If a customer wants to gossip,” he relates,
eyes sparkling, “you say, mmphm, yeah, well no … a lot of
people go to barbershops to pick up gossip, but I didn’t gossip.
It’s not a nice thing to be doing.”
Mullaney has been in Okotoks for as long as fellow hair-stylist
Wendy Shingoose can remember.
Shingoose’s Image Hair Design is just down the street from
Pete’s old shop on McRae. She has been cutting hair in Okotoks
since 1985.
