Chris Bourgon first picked up a set of clippers at 20, in 1997. By April 2024 he reckoned he had clocked 81,000 hours behind the chair. That is not a figure you arrive at by accident. It is the kind of number you only get from turning up, day after day, in the same town, for the same people.
The shop is Gilles’ 3rd Gen Barbershop in Summerstown, Ontario. Chris took it over from his father, Gilles, and it is a third-generation business. Succession in a small shop is a quiet kind of pressure. You are running your own business and, at the same time, looking after something your family built before you. Chris seems to have found the balance by keeping the shop’s name and making the work his own.
What he told the room
In February 2024, the Cornwall Business Enterprise Centre asked Chris to be the keynote speaker at its Breakfast Connections event in Williamstown, South Glengarry. The subject was mindset and resilience, and what a small business owner needs to keep going. His line from that morning is the one worth holding on to:
“I add value to every person who comes through the door.”
It is as good a description of barbering as we have heard. Not a service, not a transaction. Value, added, one person at a time.
Citizen of the Year
In 2023 Chris was named South Glengarry’s Citizen of the Year. Given a platform, he did not talk about himself. He used the moment to speak about the closure of The Glengarry News, the local paper, and what its loss meant for the community. That tells you where his attention sits: on the town, not the trophy.
That is what a barber can be. A fixed point in a community, a business that passes down through a family, and someone who speaks up for the place that made him.
Chris Bourgon is World Barber Day’s Ontario ambassador. On September 16th, barbers everywhere use their skills as a force for good, each in their own way. Follow Chris at @3rd_gen_barber, and if you run a shop, register it for World Barber Day.
Source: Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, reporting by Shawna O’Neill, February 2024.
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