My name is Erin Lindley. Xerion Homoeopathie is my store. Pronounced, zehree- on, it's named after a reference from old alchemy. Xerion was a red, powdered substance reputed to have the power to change any metal into gold. Made into an elixir, it conferred immortality.
Over the last four years, my mother, grandmother and I have seen Xerion rise as a destination store for individuals and health practitioners from all over the city. Here's the story of Xerion. It all began in the 1950s, going back yet another generation to my great-grandmother, Elizabeth. Elizabeth brought concepts of healthful eating and vitamin supplementation home from Arizona, while searching for help for her dying husband. She warned her daughter, Faye, of the dangers of pop, sugar, white flour and hydrogenated oils. Faye's four daughters learned to enjoy whole grain rye bread and garden vegetables and drank apple juice instead of milk. While their friends were eating chocolate bars and ice cream flakes, they were eating fresh fruit and slow-cooked oatmeal.
My Mom, Faye's oldest daughter, took the natural lifestyle a step further with vegetarianism and her first home birth in 1981. That's when I came on the scene. I'm told that I was raised on veggies in the blender and goat's milk until my first birthday. As a teenager I barely tolerated the handfuls of supplements Mom would hand me every morning. However, my first job at fifteen was in a health food store in Northland. I told my boss in the interview, "my Mom feeds me pills," when he asked what I knew about supplements. I read every book in the store on vitamins and herbs and developed a loyal following. I was a rebellious teen in leather clothes and black makeup, yet people took my advice!
Maybe it was because my mom was an opera singer and my dad a pipe organ technician, but after high school I wanted to be an artist. However, after grossing $800 in my first year as a photographer, I left the romantic world of the struggling artist to become an entrepreneur. "Write a business plan," said Mom, when I told her that I wanted to open up my own health food store. A few days later, she saw the "For Lease" sign in the old bakery in Varsity. Three months later, after we scraped thirty-five years of doughnut grease off the walls, renovated, and put up barn-board wainscotting from the family farm, Xerion Health Food was born. Quite a few people from my early days found their way to our door and are among our treasured regular customers. I was given an afghan as a house-warming present from a customer who was so pleased that I'd bought my first house.
I have had the privilege of growing up in life and in business with these great people. In our first four years I won the Canadian Health Food Association's 'Rising Star' Award. Mom retired from singing to find her true calling as a homeopath, and we now have the largest homeopathic dispensary in the province. It is housed in a clinic made out of hundred-year-old pine from an abandoned pipe organ. Miracles happen here every day.
On the day of our fifth anniversary as Xerion Health Food, we closed our doors and began a new leg of our journey with a renovation. With the help of friends and family we put in a new hardwood floor, two more treatment rooms, a waiting area, bright new shelving as well as fresh paint and new oak doors. In our new identity as Xerion Homoeopathie, we boast three homeopaths. Mom's practice is busy with referrals and two MD homeopaths have joined us. Our seminars on vaccinations bring interested parents from all over the city and our classes on homeopathy are helping to create a homeopathic community. As for me, I'm trying to figure out how to create a grassroots movement and change the face of alternative medicine and, not to mention, have my sights set on opening a second location!
As for the Xerion elixir, we'll keep you posted
