CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — Travis Edwards has his phone hooked up to a Bluetooth speaker.
The Bahamian man shuffles to a new song, and a sombre track by Sir, an R&B singer, starts resonating off the apartment living room’s walls.
A couple of roommates sit on the couch, taking it easy. Circling Edwards is a friend holding hair clippers to his head.
“You want this rounded or flat in the back?” he asks.
“Flat,” Edwards replies.
“Flat?”
“Yeah.”
“Baby you’re all in my head, in my head,” Sir laments through the speakers.
Luke Ignace leans in and continues trimming Edwards’ hair at his makeshift barber shop, Urban Kutz. Complementing the music is steady conversation, on topics like the generational differences between a son and his old man and the importance of jokes.
“If I don’t get at least one joke in the barber shop, that ain’t no barber shop to me, and I ain’t never coming back,” Edwards jokes.
Ignace laughs. He loves the barber shop vibe, he says.
“I’ve always been about community.”
“Everybody who sits in my chair, man, I want to get to know them. I want to actually understand them.”
-Luke Ignace
Urban Kutz opened on March 3 of this year. P.E.I.’s black community doesn’t have many options for barbers who know how to cut black hair, and last month’s Black History Month showed Ignace there’s a desire for a black-owned shop.
“I’m ready to invest my time in it, you know? And to fight for it.”
He’s still getting the barber shop off the ground, operating out of his Charlottetown apartment. He’s been cutting hair since he lived in the Bahamas, where it’s common for people to learn, he says.
“It’s a skill that you just know how to do.”
When he moved to P.E.I. for school in 2014, he’d cut hair for anyone in need. He currently cuts for free because otherwise it would violate the P.E.I. Hairdressers’ Act.
But it’s also because he enjoys the environment. Barber shops are culturally important to him and can be a relaxing or even therapeutic space, he said.
“Everybody who sits in my chair, man, I want to get to know them. I want to actually understand them.”
Ignace studied theatre and business at Holland College. He’s working to become a licensed hairdresser and he already has a downtown space reserved to open the shop, possibly this year.
He’s looking into funding options. He hopes to get government support, as he wants the province to take more initiative in supporting and accepting the black community, he said.
Edwards joined in and compared this support to his relationship. His girlfriend appreciates it when he does something without being asked to, he said.
“Exactly, man,” Ignace says. “You have to take the initiative to show you care.”
Following this side-conversation, Ignace noted it was an example of what he wants his shop to be.
“This is the barber shop, right? After the cut, this is how you be talking for real.”
Back home, Edwards would go to barber shops to escape the heat or when he was having a bad day. He enjoyed learning from the older men’s stories and would often leave smiling, he says.
“The best advice you get is from a barber shop, honestly.”
Ignace wants Urban Kutz to be a community effort that engages the Island.
“It’s something that I’m doing for minorities on P.E.I. I really feel like a barber shop would be that space that educates Islanders and that promotes more ethnic work on P.E.I.”
