Charlie Calogero, now 92, in his heyday at his Sabia Barber Shop, at Burnhamthorpe Mall.
One of the longest-serving barbers in South Etobicoke has packed in his scissors after 50-years of grooming generations of men and women.
Generations of men and women still remember Charlie Calogero, now 92, and attending his Sabia Barber Shop, at Burnhamthorpe Mall.
The pleasant Calogero purchased the shop around 1967 and renamed it Sabia. He sold the thriving business in 2018 due to his wife, Maria’s declining health.
Calogero looked after Maria until she passed away last September.
The 50–year barber with his late wife, Maria.
“I have always been a barber and never had another kind of job,” he said through his son, Vito, who interpreted from Italian. “I took the advice of my father back in Italy.”
His father and grandfather were both miners in their native Sicily, and they told him and his two brothers to find other jobs because mining was dangerous work.
Calogero listened to his father and became a barber and his brothers tailors.
After leaving Sicily, he settled in Rome for 10 years, before arriving in Canada in 1962.
Charlie (left) with fellow barbers he worked with at another shop. Family photos.
He saved and managed to purchase Sabia Barber Shop and has never looked back.
“I loved my customers and many became good friends,” Calogero recall. “I loved to cut their hair and make them look better.”
His customers included firemen, police chiefs, military men and generations of families. Many of the youngsters he trimmed loved his work so much that they never left.
“I loved the work,” he said. “I loved the routine and became close to many of my customers.”
He is proud to have never have missed a day of work, except on holidays back to Italy and Mexico, Vito explained.
Charlies ran his own barber shop for 50 years at Burnhamthorpe Mall.
“He never wanted to leave his store or his customers,” he recalled. “It was a different generation back then.”
Vito said his dad rarely took a day off work and loved going to work every day.
Calogero was a family man who worked hard to provide for his wife and children.
He has since written an autobiography, his second book, and hopes to have it published one of these days.
“I love retirement and that I can do other things,” the barber said. “But I missed work and not going to work.”
Calogero, and another barber, ran a thriving shop, in a time when people got their hair cut every couple weeks, in an era before the Internet and e-mails, when life was simple.
At almost 100, he is still cutting the hair of Vito and other family members.
It’s hard to keep a good barber down.