When people ask me where is home I say 276 Durham Street in Kincardine.

It's where I grew up. It's where I spent the first 17 years of my life before I left for university. It was the home of Elsie & Gerry, Eric, Warren, Paul Buckingham & Laurie Crooks.

I can't find the right words to describe Elsie & Gerry...the closest I can come up with is to call them modern day shepherds, people who gather up people & animals and look after them, give them safe haven.

You see I lived on the third floor apartment at 276 Durham Street. Elsie & Gerry rented the apartment to my mother, Viola. They rented that space to my mother for next to nothing and by doing so allowed my mother to raise two kids on her own during the 1960s and 1970s.

But to me, as a child growing up in that house, I didn't recognize Elsie & Gerry as shepherds; they were "fixers".

Elsie had a beauty parlour in part of the house...she fixed women's hair and made them feel good!

Gerry was a chiropractor and mended people's aches and pains. At that time, chiropractors didn't get the respect they deserved; what they practiced was not considered conventional medicine by some.

All I can tell you is that whenever I complained to my mom about body pain she would send me downstairs to see Gerry. No matter what my ailment, Gerry would grab my head with both his hands, tell me to relax, and just when you least expected it, twisted your head as if to snap it off, thereby making a cracking sound in your neck that would, if anything, scare you into getting better! It always seemed to work.

In addition to fixing humans, Gerry loved to work on cars. It is because of him that I learned how to dismantle and put back together a vehicle's carburetor and make it spit fire!

The best thing about Gerry was he let kids be kids. He let you learn from your mistakes.

For example, there were several huge chestnut trees that grew alongside the property and they always bore chestnuts every year. Lots of chestnuts. And those chestnuts were good for throwing. Gerry let all the neighbourhood kids throw chestnuts at each other. I think he was a big kid himself and knew the pleasure we derived from the chestnut fights outweighed the inevitable pain.

Gerry seldom stopped us from playing catch or hitting baseballs with the bat around the house. I can remember several broken windows! Gerry could fix things, so maybe he didn't worry as much as many parents might have done.

And Gerry didn't seem to mind us making and flying kites in the backyard near trees. Almost every time the kites would get caught up high in the branches and we would spend hours trying to figure out how to get them down again.

Elsie & Gerry loved animals. I can't remember a time when they didn't have cats and dogs in the house. Gerry was a dog man! He taught me how to care for dogs. Dogs were a big part of his life as they are in mine, too.

Sometimes I think he cared too much about people and animals and the inevitable disappointments were sometimes too hard to bear. Because he was a "fixer" I think it was frustrating to him that everything and everyone could not be fixed.

When my mother died unexpectedly in the Spring of 1989, Elsie & Gerry didn't have the heart to tell us that they were going to sell the house. They knew how much 276 Durham Street meant. It was not only their home but our home, too.

When life gets to be too much, I just think of home.

I think of 276 Durham Street where I grew up...where Elsie & Gerry and their kids lived...where my mother lived for most of her life.

And I feel a whole lot better.

Because of that I will always be grateful to Elsie & Gerry.