Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Hey, George, it’s so great to have you. Welcome.

Georges Laraque:

Well, Ella, a vegan machine like you to be on your podcast was a must, so thank you for inviting me.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Yeah, no, I feel like it’s been a really long time coming. I don’t remember how we’ve been connected a really long time. I can’t quite remember how many years

Georges Laraque:

When you did your book, when you did your book.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Oh, is that what it was? So that’s 2015. So yeah, long time.

Georges Laraque:

Yeah, that’s right. And no, it’s pretty inspiring. Everyone that stays in shape and talks about that shows everyone that the vegan diet, you could be healthy on the vegan diet and active. And we need more and more people that talks about it because a lot of people think that losing muscle, losing energy and all that stuff. So another example, especially for women’s, that you could be a super wonder woman like you and eat healthy.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Yes. Ok. We talk about, well, the podcast is called Rise and Thrive, and I feel like that’s you, man. I mean, talk about the other world. Word that comes to mind is resilient and I really admire you so much, and I followed your story and have your book because you sent it to me. I love it. Yes. And I want to talk a little bit about that, but just before we hopped on, you mentioned that you’re on day number eight, your final day of a water fast. And so I feel like we should jump right into that because I’m just so curious. Is this the first time you’ve done an eight day water

Georges Laraque:

Fast? No, I do this every six months. And what, every six months? And by the

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Way, every six months. Yeah.

Georges Laraque:

Oh my God. And by the way, I just want to say something to people that are listening to us right now. If you want to do something like this, make sure that you have the right professional to follow you because it’s not for everyone. And I know, yeah, yeah. A water fasting, it’s mental. It’s in your head. Because I know often when I talk about fasting, people are like, oh, if I skip a meal, I get aggressive and I get mad and I’m so hungry. When you decide to do it fast, you sit back, you close your eyes and you tell your body, I’m going to be fasting now to clean you up, to give you a chance to clean up your body, you’re going to be at peace. And it’s okay. There’s no stress. I’m not stressing my body. So my body’s okay with it.

He knows that I’m doing a process to clean it. There’s zero stress. And after that, I’ll go back to eat normal again after my immune system is totally reset. Because the thing is, even I did a two golf tournament this week and people were eating beside me and it was okay. It was okay. I could at them, and it’s funny because people were making jokes. They’re looking at me drinking my water and I’m like, it’s okay. I don’t, don’t feel bad eat. And I was okay with it because I accepted it in life and everything that you do, if you accept and you just embrace it. Okay. And I know it’s not for everyone to do so because I know some of my friends have tried it after 10 hours or 12 hours or a day they were dying. But you, it’s your brain that does that.

Because right now I feel good. This is my eight day, I feel like do two weeks. The reason why I’m not doing it more is because I like to run every morning and can’t. The only thing I can’t train while I do this, because if I train, I’m going to my energy system that is cleaning up my body. If I train is going to, I’m going to waste that energy for the training. And also my muscle, since I’m not eating, I’m not going to be able to eat amino acid to recuperate. So it’s not recommended to train while you’re doing that. Right. Actually, when you do it fast and you’re supposed to be sitting relaxing, I work all day long driving around, going golf tournament. It was two days of heat in Montreal and scorching heat, and I was still doing, I was fine with it, my body was fine with it. I’m finishing day eight and that’s it. I feel so good and so healthy and yeah, it’s amazing. I think I love fasting and every six months I do it to reset my body, my immune system.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Wow, wow, wow. Okay. So for our listeners, we had Dr. Allen Goldhammer on the podcast, one of the first episodes. So he talks about fasting, but generally when he talks about fasting, it’s for people that are really suffering from some sort of a disease. You’re healthy. I mean, tell me

Georges Laraque:

I’m, I’m a hundred percent healthy. I’m a hundred percent vegan. I have no disease, I have nothing. I’m only doing it spiritual reason to clean up my body. No other reason than not. So it’s not because I’m sick or somebody told me I should do it. It’s just when you become vegan and you read more and more about what is the best thing you could do for your body and then you hat on stuff and because everyone, sometimes when you’re vegan, when you eat mac meat or mac cheese, all that stuff, I feel that I need to clean it out of my body anyway. Right? Cause once in a while, a very nice vegan restaurant that is there and that you try stuff that this is me because it’s vegan, that it’s always healthy, right? So that’s why to me, doing that cleansing, that cleans everything out, it’s awesome. It’s like a reset and then start back again.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

And why eight days? That’s a specific number.

Georges Laraque:

Ok. After three days, it takes three days for your body to eliminate all the food and everything that is in your body. So a cleansing for three days is good because everything is out. When you do eight days, what happened is that your body now eats away in a fat to gain energy. And that’s awesome because sometimes because now I want to start running longer and longer distance and I got to be lighter so my body and I could feel shrinking because when I stop eating back, I’m going to gain maybe 10 pounds of water. But you cannot gain the fat that your body ate that to store energy. So that’s why when you could go a bit longer, there’s even more benefits in terms of losing a bit of weight at the same time while you keep training after and stuff. So that’s why I do a bit longer and it helps me. So when I start running, I’m much lighter and then I keep training as hard as I can to go down even more.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

And how much water, do you have a specific number of ounces that you drink a day?

Georges Laraque:

No, but I drink all the time. I drink at least three liters. And I’m telling you, I’m sick of drinking water right now. Just I drink water all the time to make sure I’m not dehydrated. And it’s so hot in Montreal right now. So it is insane. It’s been so hot and and I drink as much as I can and that helps you flush a lot. And I don’t think I go above four liters. It all depends. Calculate a bit what I have because drinking too much water is not good. But let me tell you, I’m so excited because I also do the intermittent fasting, 16 hours and too many fasting. So I eat between 11 and six at night, so I cannot, I’ve already cut up all my fruits for 11:00 AM tomorrow morning because ele at tomorrow 11, I’m going to start eating. And when you break a fast for that long, you got to start with little fruits first just to get your body used to it, then the day after vegetables, and then the kid eat normal after.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

And what kind of fruit are you going to have?

Georges Laraque:

The only fruit is recommended to start after a fast. That is blackberry, raspberry, strawberries and blueberries because the, it’s not too hard on the system. It’s easy to digest, to start because your body, the system is started back again. You can’t go too heavy. So I’m going to eat that all throughout the day from 11 till six, and then the day after, I’m going to introduce vegetables, no nuts yet, nothing like that. Vegetables and stuff that is a bit harder to digest, but my system will get used to it. And then on day three, I could go back to eating normal as I was doing. But now the stomach’s shrinking and the thing is what’s amazing, and when I’m going to have my first cup of fruits tomorrow, I’m going to want to go run for a marathon because the energy that sugar goes right to your brain and it’s like your body is like, oh my God, I’m having pure fuel right now and there’s no parasite in my body to eat it before it gets to my body. So it’s just awesome. Your body, when your body’s all clean and you put fuel in it, it’s like, oh my god, I could fly. I feel like if I put my arm so much, I’m going to fly to the moon and it’s just amazing.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Yeah. Hi. High on berries.

Georges Laraque:

Yeah,

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

A berry. Hi. Who

Georges Laraque:

Did you have today have today? George Ccb. D? No, no, no. Berries. Berries.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Oh my gosh. That’s so great. And so going back to normal eating while we’re on this topic. Yeah. What does that look like for you? How much raw versus cooked? And I know you said every once in a while you splurge on some vegan full meat or whatever, but that’s not regular. Yeah.

Georges Laraque:

So I’m not lucky like you to live in Florida where you have the beautiful weather all year long. Yeah, because as you know, here in Montreal when it’s cold, it’s hard in the winter to eat raw all the time. I used to own a raw vegan restaurant criticized for 10 years, and we eventually had to sold it because all the cold weather, because of the cold weather, people didn’t come in in the winter. They only came in in the summer. And then it was like we never made money every year because we’re not warm weather all year long where raw people would come in all the time because in the winter you always feel like you want warm stuff. So in the winter I eat more warm vegan stuff and chili is my favorite meal and lots of soup and stuff like that. In the summer I eat more raw because when it’s hot, your body doesn’t need to feel, you don’t need something hot in the summer.

And also, I don’t eat breakfast. I know that the saying that people think that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you need it. No. And again, when I say that, I’m not telling you not to do. So people that are listening to me, I’m just telling you the stuff that I’ve learned that I’ve read. And it is better to give more time to your body to digest what you had the day before. That’s why I do intermittent fasting than stuffing your body with more stuff when your body hasn’t finished digesting. And then when you eliminate properly, that’s what gives you energy. Well, not necessarily what you’re putting in your body. So that’s why I don’t have breakfast. But yeah, it’s awesome. I love the summer because I have more fruit, more fresh vegetable, more raw stuff and a winter more cooked stuff.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Oh my god. I don’t know. I literally don’t know how. I know you like the cold. I know you were out there in your shorts as a little kid in Yeah, freezing cold. And your parents were like, what the hell? I’m with your parents because I, you just don’t do cold wells.

Georges Laraque:

But Ella, what’s funny about that, I think I’m the only black man that don’t like white the sun, that don’t warm weather because I’m born in December in winter, and I lived in hockey rink all my life. That’s my life playing hockey. So playing outside in park and being outside when it’s minor, sporty, it’s nothing for me in the winter, I don’t even wear jackets. I’m always warm. I love the cold. And all my friends, all my family, they’re like, you are crazy, man. This black man that loves snow. I do do cross country skiing. I’ve never seen a brother doing cross cross skiing. They don’t do that stuff.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Well, you’ve been putting yourself in that kind of situation since you were a little kid and to learn that hockey wasn’t even your favorite sport.

Georges Laraque:

Yeah.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. Let’s take it back and start where you chose this sport that wasn’t your favorite sport. Yeah. That was a really tough sport for you to be in.

Georges Laraque:

Yeah. No, my parents were born in Haiti and they came to Montreal when they were 20 years old. So that’s why I was born in Montreal, Haitian descent. So when I was a kid, I was hyperactive and I was quite the athlete. I was the best in all the sport that was practicing. And when I was 15 years old, I was fortunate enough to have to make a choice between playing soccer, tried professional soccer, American football or hockey, and actually hockey. I was drafted in the Quebec League, the junior league at the time that I had to make that decision. And all my youth, youth, when I played minor hockey, I experienced tons of racism playing hockey because hockey back then was considered, and it’s still today is considered white men’s sport. And I had no black players playing hockey in the city that I was in.

And I was getting called the N word every day I was at the rink. It was so bad that my parents stopped going to the rink and they didn’t want me to play hockey anymore because they thought that all this hatreds was going to affect me as a human being. And I remember when I was a kid, I was nine years old, I was telling my parents, I can’t quit because if I do, they’re going to win. And my parents were like, you know what? If you don’t want to quit, fine, we’re not going anymore. You’re going to have to go on your own. How many kids at nine years old take their hockey back, their stick on a bicycle in the winter, go to the rink and back to play, to practice carrying the N word all the time and then going back home and suffering in silence because there’s nothing that I could do, all I could do.

I read Jackie Robinson’s book, he was the first black player that played baseball, and I read what he had to go through to make it to major league baseball and all the insult he was getting used it as a motivation to try harder in the sport. So that’s what I did. All the insult that I heard, I was playing harder. And I was like, one day I’m going to prove you wrong. So when I was 15 years old, I had to make that choice. Hockey is my least favorite sport of the three. My dad obviously knows more about soccer. Soccer was to me, number one. My dad went to Mexico to see Argentina when the World Cup, he filmed every game. My favorite play was Diego. So I love soccer a lot. Football. I was playing football when I was 15 fi. I was doing 10 times down again as a running back scholarship in the States.

The reason why I pick hockey is because, think about it, I’m 15 years old this way of thinking, do I want to be another African-American that plays soccer or football or I want to be one of the few black guys that played hockey. And I could become a role model like Jack Robinson, inspire other minorities to play hockey when there’s not enough representation. And on top of it, I had another dream to write my own autobiography like Jack Robinson did because it inspired me. What happened many years later, I played 13 years in the N H L. I wrote my own autobiography in French English that became bestseller. And I’m a public speaker talking about my story around the world. That is so awesome. I took the harder road because I wanted to be a role model. It worked out. Life was perfect. I had a vision.

I didn’t care. Often in life when people say, oh, I didn’t, I had a goal, I had a dream. And I didn’t do it because my parent didn’t, didn’t believe in me. My friend didn’t believe in me. No. When they talk about the secret, the power to thinking I was doing that since I was a kid, without knowing about it, I had a vision. Nobody was going to stop me to stop me achieving that goal. And when I made it to the N H L, I thanked everyone that called me names. I thanked them all. I said, you guys that all called me names gave me the additional fuel that I needed to make it to the nhl because without you, I don’t play in the nhl. I pick another sport and maybe I don’t become a professional for that long. And when I said that, there’s many of them years later that actually wrote me letters to apologize because they remembered that they were one of these kids that were insulting me back then. So it’s awesome my life, everything’s worked. And that’s why I embrace everything. Everything I do, I know it’s going to work. I’m so positive. I’m always smiley, always full of energy. And things always work out when you work as hard as you can.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Oh, I, I’ve heard this story now so many times. And every single time my full body goes into chills because it’s so powerful and Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, I just have to think, okay, where did this come from? And you, are you just an old soul? How many lifetimes have you had to come back and learn these lessons to be able to do that as such a young person?

Georges Laraque:

No. Another thing too is my parents. My parents, the way they were raised were raised tough in Haiti. They were raised with the belt. So they fought for survival in Haiti and they came to Montreal to have a better life. So my parents were very strict with me. They were very strict with us. Education was important and I was raised with the belt. It’s not a good way to raise children with the belt to hit them. But my parents were very severe on me. And because of that, I kind of learned to stood up and to be strong and to withstand everything. I was a friend of my dad. I hated racism because what I faced. So it kind of forged my character. And I was like these two incidents, my dad and hockey and the racism is not going to define me as a human being.

I’m not going to be a frustrated person that’s going to hand up in a gang and in jail using as a reason that I was beaten as a kid. No, I’m going to show him too. And when I made it to an child, my dad said that I give him a lesson, I give him a lesson of perseverance, his kid give him a lesson. And I was so proud to hear that. And that’s why it’s the way I was brought up probably helped a lot about the person that I became because I became strong. And nothing, when you’re a kid and all you youth, you grew up with very strict parent that beats you and racism, there’s nothing that could faze you like after that. Those to me, were the hardest obstacle. When the kids were playing hi, kids were playing hide and seek and having fun, I was cutting the neighbor’s grass, shoveling driveways to raise money to buy equipment on my own and doing this and doing that and doing this. I never went to the forum once when I was a kid. My parents never took me there. I never went to the Canadian play once and I lived there, they didn’t care. And I was like, you know what? I’ll do it on my own. It doesn’t matter. I’ll succeed. So that’s why if you come combine all these things together, I think it helped me forge my character and the holder I got, the stronger I was and the more I knew I was going to move mountains one day.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Well, you certainly have. And then having this sense of purpose to fight these, and I’m going to say isms because it was in what year was it that you changed your diet, that you went vegan? It was

Georges Laraque:

Okay, so that, that’s also crazy because the thing is before I was vegan, I used to eat pretty much a cow day, the Atkins diet that you’re supposed just to eat meat and to cut up and stuff. So that’s what I was doing before. And a friend of mine was telling me to watch hurtling hurtling. And then I was like, what is that? And she’s like, it’s documentary that about animals and it’s so it’s going to change your life. And I’m like, I don’t need to watch it. I don’t care. There’s nothing that’s going to make me stop eating meat. All those stupid carnivores thing that you close-minded or whatever. So after six months, I’m getting a wr of watching it. I watched it. I watched her claims narrated by Wain Phoenix, produced by Sean Monson. And I cried for one hour. I saw animal hand up in her plate, how much they suffered to hand up in her plate.

And actually believe it or not, I was dumb enough to think that when we ate animals, we ate them when they were too old and then they were killing him when after they have all their life, I didn’t that And obviously the meat is no good in more morning to world. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know how much they suffered. I didn’t know how bad it was for the environment and how bad it was for my health. When I saw that, I cried. I felt like a hypocrite all these years. And I was like, oh my God, I’m becoming vegan. I’m going to die. I had another year to play in the N H L. I don’t care if I’m going to die, I’m done. I’m going to lose on my muscle. I won’t be able to fight anymore in the ice. This is it.

But I don’t care if I die fine. And even my mom, when I told her that, she’s like, oh my god, you’re going to die. It’s not good for you. And I said, I don’t care. I wash her legs. I’m done. So when I made that decision, I called a nutritionist, a vegan nutritionist of was like, I don’t know what to do. My life is done. I become a vegan. All the stuff that had a home, I put it in the bag and I give it to a shelter because they all had animal product. Could you help me, show me what to do? That nutritionist, it was in 2009 and she knew that if she helped me, because I played with Mancha Canadian, it could do something huge for the vegan movement, she came to my place. We went to an organic grocery store, we stayed there for four hours.

She introduced me to kale, bought chores, all stuff that I had never known what it was. I didn’t know what Kell was before, but chart and all that stuff. She explained to me about protein, that question that people ask all the time when you eat for protein. And she explained to me about all the stuff that combined of animal amino acid combined together gives you a complete protein. Complete protein from plants is much healthier than protein from animals. And also it’s alive. When people are eating dead animals, it’s dead. So she’s telling me all these stuff and she made me a couple menus. I started reading more and more and more and I was like, my God, this is not that bad. Maybe I’ll be okay. So what I did in Montreal, because now everybody was puzzled, isn’t going to work or not because I’ve been here to play with the Montreal Canadian.

So I did testing before and after I went to a cardiology institute of cardiology and they did test with me on V2 test and my blood and all that stuff because I wanted to see the difference between now and four months later. It’s actually on YouTube, it’s in French matter. Unfortunately LA if people understand French, they could see it because it’s online and you see me do the test before and after and doctors that is well known in Montreal explained the difference of my test before and after four months have been vegan. And when you talk about the result, he said, I was put the same wattage on the bike the second time as people on the tour of France. He couldn’t believe the level. And when I saw that, I was like, I’m actually stronger eating like plain base. That’s amazing. So what I started to do once I saw amazing, I started reading more and more about it and I started showing every month of hurtling to the public.

I would rent a room, invite people to come and watch it and to make sure more people would come. I would draw some of my hockey jersey that would get made so people come and watch it and I would help convert more people every month to come and watch it. I talk so much about hurtling that eventually Sean Monson contacted me, came to Montreal and I did the French narration of hurtling, which is with my voice. So people in Montreal could watch it in French, not in English with subtitle. And I continued doing viewing in French after. And I started become the biggest vegan advocate activist. I started doing protests on the street, going in front of building in front of slaughterhouse, joining groups and with sign and everything. And I felt like I had time to catch up animal don’t animal don’t have a voice.

If you cannot be the voice, who is it going to be? And because in Montreal, in Canada, I was well known because of hockey. It disrupt the industry. It was awesome. It was awesome what it did. And since that day, vegan restaurants in Montreal grew, grew the it’s everywhere now. It is amazing. And that’s when I joined. And then I joined the Ravi restaurant. I became an owner of it. I became an owner of Rice Kombucha when I’m still part owner today. And yeah, I’ve always been a huge supporter of the vegan community and everything that they do because I think it’s awesome. Last thing I want to say regarding that, everyone that is listening to us that if you have animals at home, cats, dogs or whatever, you call yourself an animal lover, you pet them, you feed them, you love them, you give them name, you take them for a walk.

Well, if you sit that you love animals, how could you eat them? It’s not a paradox. Do you have animals at home that you said, oh, I love animals, but eating bacon and pigs and stuff, that doesn’t make sense. If you love animals, you’re not going to eat them. And actually when I do conferences about veganism, I talk more about the effect on their health than the fact that animals are dying because more people are saying they’re, well, I’m not killing you. Well, when you talk about the effect on their health, often that’s when they’re listening. Because when it affects you, people eyes are open. But if it’s just somebody killed it, not me, I’m okay with it. But again, could you hunt animals to eat them? Most people would say no, but they’ll eat them. So that’s also another paradox to me.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Yeah. So no so many things to say about this. First of all, just the fact that you saw the movie and you opened your heart to it and there’s something that we have to do. I’ve been an animal lover. I stopped eating animals at the age of seven and I had to learn to put up a wall or else I would just be destroyed all the time. I couldn’t go out to dinner. I couldn’t be around people eating meat. If I envisioned where that dead animal, I need to have a funeral every time I go out to dinner. So there’s this wall that we put up and you allowed that wall to come down. And knowing that that would mean that you had to change everything and put whole, what your thought was is that I’m putting my entire career on the line here. Yeah, I could be destroying my career. Where do you think, I mean that’s courageous. I mean that takes a lot of courage to be able to do that. Do you know how that happened? How your heart, yes. How you allowed your heart to open like that?

Georges Laraque:

Yes. And that’s a very good question. Nobody ever asked me that and I’m so happy to answer it. That’s awesome. Okay, how do I open my heart? The biggest thing in life that I fought is racism, which is injustice. If your entire life you fought against injustice, you have a sensibility when other being are suffering injustice, because I lived there all my life. So animals after I saw this documentary, they’re suffering injustice just like I did. And actually even worse than me because they’re getting killed. Animal has compassion, they have heart. They feel loved. They love to be loved. So who are we to decide when they could live and when they could die? So right away, as I felt bad about how I grew up, I felt bad for animal. I compassion for them. So I felt I had to defend them. It’s the same thing for the gay rights.

I defend the gay rights too because I have compassion for another injustice. I almost feel like now that I have a platform, my platform is to help people that are suffering from injustice and animals are wellbeing, hurt, being hurt lanes. We all are. So that’s why it was easy after I saw that to defend them because I have to defend myself all my life and I know what it’s like. And unfortunately animals cannot defend themselves. So if there wasn’t people like you, me, the vegan lawyers and other people that were there to enforce laws, it would be a thousand times worse than it actually is now. There’s love for animal cruelty and all that stuff. I wish there’d be even more. But it’s a good start compared to many years ago. So that’s why to me is because of how I live all my life and I’ve always was a fighter. I felt like, okay, George, you were strong enough to fight enough to play in the N H L. Now your fight is not over. You have to fight for others. So I’m fighting for animals, I’m fighting for woman’s, right? I’m fighting for people that pe people that defend gay, right? Any cause that I could help out to me is as sense, is as sensitive as the one that I was fighting when I was a kid.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

That makes so much sense. The other courageous piece of this is the opening the heart, but then also a lot of, I think plant-based athletes are kind of afraid to come out and talk about that to the public to, and you just shot right out of the gate where embraced it.

Georges Laraque:

And I got criticized by the way, I got bombarded. And

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

That’s why people are afraid to come out because they’re going to get judged And

Georges Laraque:

Think about the amount of people that are vegan in this world versus the meat eaters. I got bombarded, I got insulted, but I don’t care. You insulting me because I’m plain base because I don’t eat animals because I don’t kill animals. It’s not weird. And you know what I do sometimes because I kind of like to shock people because when you do get them to think, sometimes I go in front of slaughterhouse, I take a picture and I put my thumbs down. I do things like that. People, they go nuts. It affects them. They don’t like it because it’s kind of like you’re touching the comfort. I don’t care about the killing my comfort. I love me, I love this. You’re not going to take it away from me. I’m not taking anything. I’m just taking a picture in front of a cemetery where my thumb is down and rack it all negatively. I read this and I just laugh. I just laugh. Cause to me it’s like it makes no sense eating something that is dead. It’s dead full of H g h. And on top of it, I had something else for people that love red meat. Ella, I’ll ask you the question. Do you think it’s normal when you go to grocery store and you see all the meat and the ground beef that is bright red under the light?

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Is that normal?

Georges Laraque:

Yeah,

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

I don’t know. I try to avoid that aisle.

Georges Laraque:

Ok, usually meat, if you go, when you look at meat section, red meat section, everything is bright red. But normally the piece of meat, like under the sun, under lights, when it’s dead, it turns brown. It stays bright red because what they do, they inject red dye or monoxide carbon to make sure it stays pink, red. So people think it’s pressure when actually it’s actually even worse. That’s why it’s bright red. People could research it. Right now, if you listen to this and don’t believe me, research it, why it stays bright red like that. It is not natural. It’s not normal. That’s what you put in your body. That’s what cancer is. Happy cancer. Me, I prefer to eat stuff that alive, plant-based and that’s it. I couldn’t believe that I was eating like that before, but I could go on and on about why we should do that switch health wise, so many good reason for it.

For your life. I’m not saying that meat doesn’t taste good, but when you do know how bad it is for you, what kind of life do you want to have? Do you want to survive surviving mean we only have one life to live, right? If we’re lucky, we’re going to live past 75. You only have one life to live. When you eat unhealthy stuff that is acidic, that your product can meet, your ache, can pain, you’re sore, you can trend, you get older, you complain. You take pills, you take that, you take this, I’m called this surviving how you want to be living, pain free, never tired, full of energy. Your brain is awake, you know, feel so good. No complaint. You are a positive person to be around. And actually another thing too, if you want to compare the groceries, how expensive it is, the most impressive thing of the groceries is meat and dairy.

Like a bag of grains. Like this cost nothing. You cook it, you have enough for week, man. There’s no reason in the world not to be vegan. And actually the only people that I understand that are not vegan because I do understandable, is the first nation. The first nation that lives in a forest. The hunts that use the entire animal that do it with respect. And for them it’s a necessity. They don’t have under any other ways or people that are than the north, the Eskimos and stuff. I understand that for some people it could be a must and they have no choice. In North America, us having a must, if instead of feeding all the animals, the million of animals that we’re doing, we fed the planet there means no starvation in the world. It takes I think eight pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat.

That’s not efficient, that is not efficient. It doesn’t make sense. And the amount of water, too amount of water it takes to give to those animals when displaced people have no water, that doesn’t make sense. Those are the stuff that we should address. Not getting slaughterhoused that reproduce chemically animals because we’re too much on the planet and we knew hga. So it grows quicker because obviously if animals were made for us, there’d be enough wild animals in the world for the planet. But no, there isn’t. So we have to reproduce them because there’s not enough. If we only ate wild animal, which is healthier than industrial animal, there’ll be no more wild animal on the planet because we’re too much. So let’s reproduce them chemically. Or even worse than that, what about that company that is now finding ways to recreate animals with chemical? That’s insane where we’re going. It is so much easier to be plant-based and not having to eat and say and all of this stuff that now it’s coming out. I’m looking at this, I’m like, what’s coming out next? It’s should be so much simpler player than that.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Yeah. Wow. And I want to get to the sustainability piece, but I also want to talk about your transition out away from hockey and knowing how most pro athletes, that can be a really tough transition because the whole identity is kind of wrapped up and I am a pro athlete, right? Yeah. And and for you had this whole kind of new project to go forward with. I mean in terms of caring about something very deeply. Yeah. Can you talk about what that transition, I mean it must have been still really tough, but yeah, can you talk about that a little

Georges Laraque:

Bit? Okay, so the first thing before talking about business wise, the transition is that the thing that you miss the most when you’re an athlete and you compete for living as is the training and to put your body in a place that is out of limits. So when I was done, I needed, before I get into the business size, I needed to do some crazy sporting stuff that I needed to compete. So I started running at 300 pounds. So if you guys felt couple hurt quick couple years ago, it was me running because there’s no elephant at 300 pounds that runs long distance like I did. I ran two full marathons, a hundred and a half marathons, I biking, I must have ride thousand and thousand kilometers biking. I did a Ironman and I wanted to push myself as much as I could. I ran crazy.

And at the same time when I was doing vegan conferences, I could talk about how the vegan life gives you energy and you could do crazy things because I’ve never seen an elephant running a marathon beside me. I remember at the line when I was running marathon, people were looking at me, they’re like, Georgia, are you doing the one K walk now? I said, no, I’m running the full marathon. I did it twice, two years in a row. So I needed to do that just because I was missing that. I knew I wasn’t going to win. But if there was Dale category, I would be one of the first ones that doesn’t exist. So after I did that a bit, and it was very obviously very demanding, the first business that I got into because I was, I was vegan, I started getting to the vegan business.

So the vegan restaurant, rice, kombucha, and all this stuff that around vegan, because in Canada, because of hockey and everything, I was one of the most known vegan that there was so much publicity around it. And because I love to talk and my energy the way that I am for a lot of people, I was the perfect spokeperson, right? And after that, I just became very careful what I would do and what I would endorse after to make sure that it’s in line of cause being vegan. It’s not just how you eat and the fact that you dress clothes that is not from animal things. It’s cutting down the materialistic side because we live in a material world, people think that owning stuff flashing is so important. When you can begin, this is not important anymore. What are we flashing for? Why abundance, why wasting, why garbage?

It’s a while we of thinking that change the entire mindset. Everything be simple, everything be easier. Taking away the stress, meditating, doing yoga, taking care of your body, taking care of animals. If you’re sweet towards animal, you’ll be even more sweet towards a human being. So it’s a lifestyle that changed your entire life. I live in a world of hockey where big house before sports car and all that stuff, not anymore. I don’t care about any of that stuff anymore. Why having a bike big house, even if you can afford it. So what you have microphone in the wall to talk to somebody that is all the way downstairs, not a room because you don’t know where they are when you scream, they can’t hear you. No. To begin love is important. You want to be close, you want to be bounded together. Car, same thing.

A car is the worst investment. You could do it depreciates every day. You want to go to point A to point B. I never used to think like that, but when I became vegan, everything became so much simpler and I just didn’t care about the material stuff. And you couldn’t impress me with anything. I don’t care what people own have or whatever they have. It doesn’t matter because at the end of the day, what I care more is the person in the inside. Are you caring for others? Are you caring for animals? What kind of person are you? That’s way more important than how much money that you have. And all of this, all because of a documentary that I’ve watched that changed my entire life.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Speaking of that documentary, how hard was it to narrate and to have to watch that over and over again? I mean your heart has to break just over and over and over again.

Georges Laraque:

That thing, when I did the narration of it as when I did it, because the French language, there’s more words than the English language. When I was doing it, there was two French teachers in front of me because Sean Monson is only speak English. And that two French teachers that translated the entire text, they were making sure my tone and my voice and everything that I said was proper. So when I was doing it, what I was saying, when I was reading the text, they had to match with the image. And sometimes I had to redo it and I had to redo it. I did a mistake, I had to read it, redo it, redo it, match it with the image. It took about a hundred hours to do. So I did it so much. It took so long in the beginning it was hard.

After a while I became immune to it. And now I remember for a while I could play it with no sound and do the voice because I did it so many times that I remembered by heart what to say when an image was coming because I saw it so much. But it’s just that in a French countries, French areas, often people they don’t want to watch. If you want ’em to watch a documentary that is hard. This they don’t want to watch in English with subtitle, they want to listen to it in French and then they’re going to listen to it. So that’s also why I did it. So it was accessible to everyone that wanted to watch it in French.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Thank you for doing that. Thank you. I just can’t even imagine. Yeah. How has your spirituality, has that shifted over time as well? And did that change at all when through the vegan

Georges Laraque:

Journey? Yeah. Yeah it did. Because before being vegan, my life was more stress. Everything’s based on stress and the thing that you do and how you eat. And then when you eat and you’re in a rush all the time and you eat meat and then you body is in stress and you don’t digest it well and you get sick all the time. I was sick a lot, not a lot, but everyone, once a, I became vegan, I became just sick once. It was when I got covid, which I’m not sure anymore if it was covid, but, well that’s not a question, but I’ve never got sick other than that for since 2009. And I don’t wear a jacket in the winter. I do. I have fun. I’m never sick. I feel so good. I have, and a balance sense of energy. So when you have that is just easier to die, you know, take the stress out and just take time sometimes to just close your eyes and meditate.

You know, just sit down. Stuff that I would never do before that always felt I had stress. Now it’s like nothing matters anymore. It doesn’t matter. Nothing’s a big deal. Can’t man it. It’s so hard to explain. It’s like I know people are probably listening to me right now. They think that I have too many hits in the head in hockey, actually, I never got a concussion. So that’s not even a reason. But you see things so much clearer now. It it’s, it’s just so much simpler. Try it. It’s just so much easier. It’s just that sometimes people are just so caught up with the stuff that people are sitting around that that’s why didn’t open up their heart. But once you do and spirituality and everything, and actually I was always spiritual to had on top of it because when I was 18 years old, when I was telling you about how, to me it was important to defend people.

When I was 18 years old, I decided to try to be religion for six months. I was witness for six months, Muslim, Jewish. I tried them all cause I wanted to understand them. So when people attacked them, I defended them because I understood them. Because when people were attacking people from the religion, I felt the same as when people were attacking me with racism. So that’s another thing that I forget to tell you when you say where’s coming from terms defending people, right? I did. I could defend race now. Different people, how they think. So people, because I wanted to understand and learn them before I could defend them. And then when I became vegan after, just in line of the way that I’ve lived all my life, and that’s part of spirituality too, learning about others and understand one another, where they coming from.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

It seems like this is it’s, it’s all about connection. It’s love, compassion and connection. Understanding that we’re all here together. We’re all kind of one. And once we give up those lines that say, this is me and that’s you, them and us, and that love, there’s just, there really is something special. So special about that. And then to be able to talk to somebody like yourself, for me it gets me pretty emotional because I spent my whole life. We just see the world through this different lens that most people don’t see the world the same way. And to be able to connect with another human who also sees it through that lens and to connect in with that love and compassion it, it’s such a beautiful feeling.

Georges Laraque:

Oh, thank you. Warms my heart. Thank

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

You. Thank you, thank you. What’s next for you? What do you have going on? What are you excited about? What are you inspired by? What are you going to do next?

Georges Laraque:

Well, I stay healthy, obviously. I run every day and stretching and everything. It’s so important to give you body active. And I do so many things. I’m a public speaker. I talk all around the place. And it’s funny because in the beginning I used to talk more about sport motivation and now it’s a lot about veganism because usually people that talk veganism in group, it’s doctors that a hundred pounds wet that could levitate when it wins too much. Yes, you have a 200 pound elephant that used to fight for living. They became vegans and people were like, oh my god, how does he do it? So my story is fascinating for a lot of people. So I talk about that a lot. I have my own radio show every day. I work with the N Hhl DI Coalition group to work for diversity and ambassador for the Montreal Canadian and the mental others work for different communities too.

And then there’s so many other things that I do. It keeps me so busy. Thankfully I’m vegan, I have lots of energy so I could move around and work so much and have so much fun working. I’m a workaholic. I love working. And often my mom says, when are you going to rest? I tell her that I’m going to rest when I’m in my coffin. I have all the time to rest. But for now I have so much energy. I feel I have so much to give and I’m enjoying life to the fullest because we only have one life to live.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

George, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your story, for being so open and honest and for spreading love around the world. I appreciate you.

Georges Laraque:

It was an honor Ella to be part of your podcast. Thank you for having me. And hopefully we’ll meet up someday and try your training. I won’t be as good as you, but I’m going to try as hard as I can because I see what you do and you’re a machine.

Speaker Ella Magers, MSW:

Aw, let’s do it. Okay. But only in the summer. Awesome.