Maurice knows how to pamper and treat customers
Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
Iqaluit (Mar 05/01) - Nowdlak Maurice believes she is one of a kind -- the only professional Inuk hairdresser in Nunavut.
As she stood behind a barber's chair at the Baffin Hair Studio, wearing a long black apron, she said that detail was secondary to finding something she enjoys doing.
"I never even took the chance to even think about it," she said of her Inuk heritage.
"It's something I always expected to do ... I try my hardest to do the basic traditional stuff like sewing and being a mom (of a six-month-old baby) so it doesn't really take away from that."
"Everything else came along with it," she said as she pulled down strands of a customer's hair to compare the length.
"The people, the conversation ... There's a lot of people who think they would like to do it but then get really discouraged because they don't know how demanding it is to do that kind of PR."
The air in the salon is thick with the aroma of shampoos, gels, balms and creams as she snips the ends of the customer's hair.
Just then another customer walks through the door without an appointment.
Salon owner Suzanne Laliberte tells him to take a seat and wait.
"He's lucky," Maurice whispered. "Believe me, we never do that."
She began cutting hair at 15 years old, essentially taught by her current employer, Laliberte. Now 21, she said it is something she truly enjoys.
She grew up in Iqaluit but her job has taken her to hair shows in Quebec City and Toronto.
Now she is an expert at soothing her customers and treating them to a relaxing, pampering session at the salon.
"I was doing a colour one time," she explained. "I thought she was awake but when I went to lift up her head I startled her awake."There was another time a girl fell asleep for 40 minutes under the dryer," she added with a laugh before she started up the motor of a blow dryer.
