Local landmark closes after 31 years

BY JANET GIBSON

A local man who has taught thousands of students how to cut hair and offered low-cost "dos" to scores of pensioners will close the doors to his school Aug. 29.

Roger Levesque opened the Sudbury Regional Hairdressing School in 1977 on the second floor of a business block on Notre Dame Avenue in the Flour Mill.

"It was something I'd always wanted to do," Levesque said.

Since then he's trained students aged 17 to 60 who work all over the world and who occasionally came back to share tips with students of the day. Student Michael Parent, who now cuts hair in Pembroke, B.C., won a national competition before he was licensed.

"It's like a family here," said instructor Mariette Wheeler. "You learn off each other."

As for Levesque, student Chenelle Teahen said, "He's a very good teacher."

That's because "he has lots of experience," said student Tina Cataford, and "has a lot of stuff to teach."

Students take 1,500 hours of instruction, then apprentice for 2,000 hours in a salon. They receive their papers after passing a written exam.

People aren't born to be hairdressers, Levesque said. "It the will is there, (you) can learn. If you're doing this for the sake of a job, you're not going to be good at it."

Often students told him, "There's a lot more to this than I thought there was."

Although Levesque's licence prohibited him from cutting hair in the school, he was a hairdresser for 15 years before opening the school.

Unbeknownst to the public, when they walk through the door of a hair salon, a lot is going on in the mind of the hairdresser after the first hello.

You're looking at facial features, Levesque said, the shape of the face, the age of the person and his or her lifestyle.

"When clients comes in, you look at how they're dressed," he said. "You can really gauge what their likes or dislikes are going to be."

According to Levesque, a hairdresser never imposes a hairstyle on the customer. "The hairstyle could look smashing but if they don't like it, it won't work," he said.

Hairdressers, like bartenders, wear a lot of hats.

"They tell him things they might not tell anyone else - personal problems, marital problems, health problems," Levesque said. "I always stay away from religion and politics."

Levesque still lives in Minnow Lake where he was born and raised. "My dad opened a subdivision (on land) that used to be the family farm."

He and his brothers and sisters Yollie, Raymond, Rheal and Estelle all had streets named after them. But Roger Street was changed to Darby Street after amalgamation.

Despite several tries, Levesque hasn't been able to sell the school. Retirement will give him more time to spend with his grandchildren, he said. But it's leaving his elderly customers in tears.

"They love coming here," Wheeler said. "These walls hold a lot of stories."