Farewell to a ‘guy who knew too much and didn’t tell’
Queen’s Park barber hangs up his scissors after four decades
Call it a long career, cut short.
After 45 years, the man regulars call “Frank the barber” has hung up his clippers and combs in the basement shop at the Ontario legislature where many a premier, cabinet minister, political staffer, bureaucrat and journalist has been coiffed.
You can blame COVID-19, but it was coming anyway.
“I said enough is enough,” says Frank Filice, 77 years young, who was equally adept at talking baseball or budgets depending on who was in his red chair.
Ever discreet and with a ready smile, he won’t dish.
As Speaker of the Legislature Ted Arnott noted recently when Filice was given a tribute before MPPs began the hurlyburly of their daily question period before Christmas, his motto was “what is said in the barber’s chair stays in the barber’s chair.”
Kinda like Vegas. For just $16, plus tip. And no hangover.
“It’s a delicate location,” Filice says. His modus operandi was to listen and to never pass judgment on matters political. “You gotta be neutral and you gotta be friendly with everyone. I had a lot of good friends.”
Many customers kept coming back, even — like Elvis — after they left the building. Usually because of an election defeat, a transfer, new job or into retirement themselves.
“Frank was one of Toronto’s best-kept secrets,” says former Toronto Star Queen’s Park columnist Ian Urquhart, who would pop in once a month.
“A great barber tucked away in the basement of Queen’s Park. You could feel the vibration of the subway running down below and the throb of power up above.”
Although Filice also won’t divulge names of famous customers, others do.
“Frank is a champion. He has cut almost every premier’s hair since (Bill) Davis, he even cut my dad’s hair,” says Premier Doug Ford, whose late father was an MPP under Mike Harris. That’s as many as eight premiers, with the understandable exception of Kathleen Wynne, of course.
“I just want to wish him the very best. One of the best haircuts I’ve ever had was from Frank,” Ford added.
“He’ll be missed around Queen’s Park.”
Here’s why: Filice flew under the radar as one of Ontario’s most trusted and valued public servants.
Aside from being a rock-solid sounding board and confidante, his customers (myself included) loved being able to call down to see when his chair would be free, meaning they didn’t have to wait at a barbershop on Saturday morning flipping through old magazines until their turn.
Retired CBC reporter Robert Fisher proudly calls Filice “the guy who kept my TV hair ready.” Not to mention “the guy who knew too much and didn’t tell.”
This isn’t the first time Frank the barber has retired, although it probably is the last since he doesn’t like the idea of coming downtown on the subway in the COVID-19 era.
Over a decade ago, he pulled the plug after qualifying for his pension and planned to find a shop elsewhere to keep his scissorhand in, part-time. Then the legislature asked him to stay on three days a week in the same room shared with another stylist for women.
Barbering is the only career Filice has known, starting young in his native region of Calabria in Italy and coming to Toronto with his parents at the age of 16 in 1960, at first living in Kensington market and later working at a shop at Yonge and Wellesley that went out of business.
“The era of long hair had come in,” he laments.
That’s when, in 1975, Filice heard of the opening for a barber at the nearby legislature and applied for the job. The rest is history. Or, hairstory.
Since the shop closed in March during the first lockdown, the father of two adult children and four grandchildren has been adjusting, relaxing — and cutting his wife Lina’s hair as always.
Now that Toronto is in lockdown again and barber shops closed, Filice has a well deserved leg up on the rest of us, growing more shaggy by the day.
“I get my wife to cut my hair. I’m not joking,” he chuckles at the irony. “I trained her pretty good.”