A cut above: Courtice barbershop aims to raise $3,000 for Movember Foundation

Many people will be sporting moustaches this month for Movember, and everyone who gets theirs trimmed at The Kingsmen will be doubly supporting the cause.

The Courtice, Ont., barbershop will be donating a dollar from every service this month — that’s every cut or shave — to The Movember Foundation, a cause that’s close to the co-owner’s heart.

Steven Grimley wants to raise $3,000 for the organization, which aims to fund research into some of the biggest health issues facing men, including prostate cancer, a disease he knows all too well. Doctors diagnosed his father with the disease in 2010.

“It was terrifying… I had always been a healthy person,” says Grimley’s father, Jim, 69. “I’d always looked after my health, and it was a bit of a shock, obviously, when I first was told that I had prostate cancer.”

He says doctors told him at the time that his cancer was growing quickly and was likely to spread so he had his prostate removed.

Jim’s cancer has been in remission for the last two years, he says, but he is still taking medication every day to prevent the cancer from coming back.

Now, he is supporting his son’s cause to help raise awareness about prostate cancer, which one in seven Canadian men will develop during his lifetime, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.

“I’m really pleased that he has chosen to do this,” said Jim of his son’s initiative. “It gets the message across because there’s so many men who don’t think about it until it’s too late.”

In 2017, one in 11 Canadian men, on average, died from the disease every day.

Most of Grimley’s hair clients are men, some of whom say the cause also hits home for them.

Many clients, like Jos Diening, are leaving Grimley’s shop with this message in mind.

“I’ll definitely make my appointment with a doctor and get the check done,” said Diening.