Miles Anderson didn’t have hair this long when he was a teenager.
But the 44-year-old rancher from Fir Mountain, Sask., is turning heads wherever he goes thanks to the long locks he says he’ll wear until the U.S. border opens to live Canadian cattle.
The idea came to him one day a little more than a year ago when his hair had grown to the point when he normally would have it cut. He decided instead to wait until the border opened.
When his neighbour Jay Fitzpatrick, also a rancher and a saddle bronc rodeo competitor, spotted it and learned the reason, he too quit visiting a barber.
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“If anything, it just lightens the mood,” Anderson said of their take on a protest.
Some men raise their eyebrows at the sight of the thick shoulder-length hair Anderson now often wears in a ponytail. Others, he said, only wish they had so much hair.
The weight and heat of the hair is annoying, he said, and combing has become a real chore. He has learned more about the hair care products that his wife and four daughters might use than he probably ever thought he would.
“That gel, it really made it bad,” he recalled.
The two ranchers have been enjoying a fair bit of fame over the last few weeks, appearing on television, radio phone-in programs, websites and in newspapers.
Anderson said he is surprised by the amount of attention but he noted that no American media outlets have picked up the story.
On May 20 it will be two years since the border was closed after an Alberta cow tested positive for BSE.
Fitzpatrick and Anderson may have been able to trim their tresses March 7 had a Montana judge not issued an injunction to keep the border closed.
Anderson said he asked one of his daughters, who is graduating from high school, if she wanted him to cut it for the occasion but she said no.
