Sharp barbershop opinions on the 'power hungry' parties of 1980
The National visited a barbershop to poll its proprietor and his customers about the coming election
Perhaps befitting a man who wielded a razor and scissors for a living, barber Lyle Nattress held sharp opinions on politics.
Nattress had been watching what had been happening in Ottawa and in 1980, he believed both the Progressive Conservatives and Liberals had something undesirable in common.
"They're power hungry," said Nattress about a month before the country would head to the polls for the second time in nine months.
The National's John Blackstone dropped by his Millbrook, Ont., barbershop in January 1980, to give viewers a sense of how "mainstreet" Canadians were feeling about the election.
Parties 'wrong' to trigger election
Nattress was a loyal PC supporter and he believed the opposition parties were to blame for the election at hand.
"I think the other parties are wrong in causing an election," said Nattress, alluding to the defeat of Joe Clark's PC government the previous month.
But some of his customers didn't see the issues the same way, and they weren't necessarily worried about arguing with a guy holding a pair of scissors.
"What are you scared of?" a local farmer asked Nattress who had said he would be "scared" if the New Democrats won the election.
"Unions," Nattress said.
'What the heck would they want it for?'
"Every little businessman and lots of farmers, they think that if the NDP get in, they're going to take everything away from us," said a local farmer, who supported the New Democrats.
"Then what the heck would they want it for?"
Blackstone, the reporter, told viewers that Nattress had been known to remark that "politics these days is too much personality and not enough sense."
But the reporter said that within the Millbrook barbershop "there is certainly no shortage of either personality or sense."
