SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Linda Bockus has cut hair in just about every nook and cranny of Yellowknife since she arrived in town in 1971.

She has worked at The Fashionette - now called Vixen Hair Den. For a period she operated out of a second floor room above the Gold Range Hotel. She even went mobile at one point, going from house to house - but that got old.

Linda Bockus, owner of The Chopping Block, makes a booking at her new location on the second floor of the Monkey Tree Mall. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

"I'd usually find myself doing dishes so I could rinse a perm in the kitchen sink. Or if the woman was under the hairdryer I'd be changing the baby's diapers," said the 62-year-old owner of The Chopping Block.

But now Bockus says she may have finally found the perfect location where she can gracefully exit the haircutting stage eventually.

"I'm hoping to have at least another five years," said Bockus, who recently moved her salon from the site of the currently-under-development Center Ice Plaza, where she opened in 2001, to the second floor of the Monkey Tree Mall.

For now she's happy in her new shop, with its all-linoleum floor.

"I can have my stuff anywhere I want it," she said. "Before I was carpeted and lino, so the work area was stuck where the lino was."

She also wants to put in a back door that would lead to the back balcony facing Old Airport Road, which mostly goes unused by other business owners in the mall, where her two Maltese shihtzus could be close to her without getting in the way of customers. Increased construction activity at the plaza and the nearby Bank of Montreal site has created confusion among several of Bockus' customers as to whether she was open, she said.

"I've had close-by neighbours that work around here say, 'I thought you were closed. I thought that when they put that fence up you were out of here.' And it just continued to get worse because then the building came."

Customer Ruth Leier, who used to work at Family Vision Centre, has sat in Bockus' chair for the last five years.

"I love the way she cuts my hair. She uses a razor and nobody's ever done that before," said Leier. "It's hard to find someone in town who stays around for a long time."

Since opening in her new location, Bockus has seen business go up, and she isn't letting talk of the recession get to her, either, she said.

"Hairdressing in a recession is seldom hit. One, it makes you feel better to get your hair done. Two, if you're out looking for a job, you want to go with a new hairdo. And it's not something you can do yourself. It's not like a restaurant where you can cook your meal yourself."

Bockus, who was born in Stanbridge East, Que., and learned her trade at the Career School of Hairstyling in St. Catherines, Ont., picked up her first pair of trimmers at a young age.

"I was doing my mother's perms when I was 10," she said. "There was a hairdresser in the apartment building in front of us - Doris Leggat. We lived in an old house broken up into three apartments and (she) lived in the front had a beauty salon. She had six kids and none of them was interested in it, but I was in her shop constantly. 'Can I sweep the floors? Wash your rollers?' Everything in there fascinated me."

It was from Leggat that Bockus learned to be independent and strong-willed, a key requirement when being a female business owner, she said.

"In Quebec at that time, it was ruled by a hairdressing union. You had to charge a certain amount, work certain hours. She felt that it was her bread and butter; it was her salon and she would work when she wanted to. She actually was arrested one time for staying open too late.

"It showed me that I don't like controls," she said.

To that end, no one or nothing will decide for her when it's time to call it quits - an inevitability she views with a great degree of bittersweetness.

"I don't want to give it up because I enjoy it too much," said Bockus.