Lethbridge Hairdresser for 50+ Years

Edith Robinson (aka Becky Neilsen) – Lethbridge Hairdresser for 50+ Years

We’ve been putting together a list (and biographical information if we can find it) of women entrepreneurs of early Lethbridge.

Edith Becky Robinson Neilsen certainly personifies that, working as a hairdresser and operating several salons for over 50 years. She also made research interesting as she worked under two different names: Edith Robinson and, later, Becky Neilsen.

Edith Becky Robinson Neilsen was born in North Dakota, came to Canada in 1910 and settled in Segreton, Saskatchewan. She married W.A. Robinson in Moose Jaw in 1923, came to Lethbridge in 1926 and started Robinsons Beauty Shop in 1931 (after taking training at the Marvel Hairdressing Academy in Calgary). She married Carl Neilsen in 1979. She passed away in 1999. (obituary 8 January 1999).

In 1931, Robinson’s Hair Salon was at 246 13 Street North (business later moved to 242 13 Street North. She operated the business for the next decade or so. She must have taken a break of a few years as in 1949 she “repurchased her old premises known as Lucille’s Beauty Shoppe.” (20 October 1949 Lethbridge Herald)

She was also associated with the Westbrook’s Beauty Salon (which she took over in 1952) and Little’s Beauty Shop (which she took over management and operations of in 1966)

When she set up her salon in 1931, the Great Depression was on but she still took a chance, believing that people always needed to get their hair done. She remembered making $5 the first day and, as she later noted $5 went far in those days.

She noted her customers ranged from the rich to working girls to young immigrants to farmers’ wives.

‘They came from everywhere,’ she says. ‘Even people who came off the boat. Women with long hair from Europe were brought by their boyfriends to me. We styled them and you didn’t see them for a year. They would come back later.

‘Lots of farmers would come in and say ‘My wife wants a perm but we have no money.’ But I never turned them down. I waited or they paid with chickens or potatoes.

‘Then there was the woman from Nobleford who would drive up in a chauffeur-driven limousine. That was something to see.’” (1983 March 11, Lethbridge Herald)

When she eventually retired, she still did hairstyling for other residents in Halmrast Manor. She passed away in 1999.