Today’s Vegetarian Elite will be presented in French, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Nepali, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Thai.

I always told myself that I wanted to inspire people.

Faithful viewers, welcome to Vegetarian Elite! Today and next week, we have the honor of introducing, quite possibly, the most famous vegetarian actor in all of Québec, Mr. Joël Legendre. In our special 2-part program, Mr. Legendre chats with us about how he got his charming good looks…

And the day I stopped eating meat, all that disappeared. I became a tall, good looking, amazing young man!

Realizing his dream through hosting “Opération Enfant Soleil” telethon for the last 10 years…

And the first time I was on the set of Opération Enfant Soleil, I said, “I am doing exactly what I wanted. I am a comedian-missionary.”

And what Joël Legendre’s perfect world would be like…

A whole new world A new fantastic point of view

Deeply devoted as a parent and a champion for children’s charities, it is fitting that Mr. Legendre’s rise to fame began with hosting popular children television shows. Since then, he has starred in numerous other television shows and theater productions including “My Fair Lady” and “Grease.” He recently hosted four consecutive years of the highly rated reality TV show “Occupation Double,” with ongoing endeavors hosting the weekly TV talkshow “Le Téléphone” and a gameshow called “Paquet Voleur.” He is a correspondent and a director; and in 2005, was a language diction teacher for the most watched television show in Canada, “Star Académie.” You can also hear him every morning hosting for the second most popular French radio station in Québec, Rock Détente.

I went around the Expo as everyone here, the Eat Well Expo and Living Green. I fell in love with a little girl of 11 years old named Élisabeth, who works today, in fact, who does demonstrations and sells Emergency products. Halo!

Hi!

How are you doing?

Well.

Hey Élisabeth, you did that all weekend until today.

Well, I did that yesterday.

So what’s your Emergency product? Well, it’s the little powder that you put in water, then it’s energizing.

Are they vitamins? (Yes.) Vitamin C. (Yes, and B.) Vitamin C and B. And why is this vitamin the best of all?

Well, because it’s good.

Because it’s good! You’re cute. Are we going to look like you if we take these vitamins?

Well, certainly.

Oh super! His well known talents in television shows have led him to roles dubbing leading Hollywood actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic” and Chris Rankin in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” Mr. Joël Legendre has been sought after by Walt Disney Pictures to be the famous French voice of Aladdin; and also lent his voice for Disney’s Mulan and Hercules. In a rare television moment in 2008, Mr. Legendre was paired in a duet with the legendary Québec singer Mrs. Ginette Reno on the television show “The Hour of Glory.” His soaring performances, along with their rendition of the classic “Un peu plus haut, un peu plus loin,” won him the competition. He was also crowned the winner of last year’s “Match des Étoiles,” the Québec equivalent of “Dancing with the Stars.”

Show business is a pretty exceptional environment because people are very open-minded. So, when you get there and you say that you are vegetarian, most of the time, even on the set, there is always a dish that is vegetarian because it is an environment that has a lot of vegetarians, or as I call them, part-time vegetarians, so people who really do not eat a lot of meat but who are mostly vegetarian.

It is hard to find a more versatile and energetic star in Québec’s artistic community than Mr. Joël Legendre. He was born in the quaint municipality of Sainte-Hélène de Bagot in southwestern Québec where the population never peaks much past 1,500 people. Being brought up on a farm, it is there that he fostered his love for animals and realized he would become a vegetarian for life.

Well, when we are born on a farm, something magical happens. That is, for a child, there is something exceptional about a farm because it means freedom. So I was able to develop my imagination and I did a lot with the help of the animals. There was always a little piglet in a litter that I adopted and that little piglet became my dog. So it would follow me around everywhere on the farm. So I had geese, ducks. I raised rabbits also.

There were cats because we had 3,000 chickens, 13,000 pigs. There were swallows. There were pigeons. I bathed in an animal world. And I used each animal in the play that I would put together about once a week. So, instead of having human friends, because on our street, there were not a lot of kids my age, I had animal friends. We had two horses also. My father loved horses. So whether want to or not, this instils into the child respect for the animals and also the beauty of animals.

So that is how I developed my love for animals. So I grew up knowing that the animal that found itself on my plate had a name, had a personality. In my head, he was talking to me, he was communicating with me. So it was not long before I crossed that out completely and I did not want to eat the animals that I knew.

Although Mr. Legendre had nurtured a love for animals from a very young age, vegetarianism was largely unknown in his childhood. He struggled through bouts of bad health in his youth as he was forced to eat meat. Through personal experience and knowledge being a vegetarian now for over 25 years, Mr. Legendre is convinced that the plant-based diet is the optimal choice for everyone, including children.

At the age of sixteen, when I was finally able to become a vegetarian, then I decided to be one. When I began college, then I really decided that it was over, that I was going to eat what my body needed and I knew that my body did not need meat.

You already knew at that age?

Oh, yes. I knew since the age of five that I did not need to eat meat. I don’t know why, but I always knew. I am really built to be a vegetarian because all the years that I ate meat, I was a puny child, a frail child, I was often sick, gastrointestinal problems and all that. And the day I stopped eating meat, all that disappeared. I became a tall, good looking, amazing young man! But I did not know that it would make me healthier to stop eating meat. All I wanted was to go to bed at night and say to myself, “Oh, I did not kill any pigs today, I did not kill any cows today, I did not kill any chickens.” That is still what I tell myself today. It is perhaps a little childish or an innocent way of thinking, but at night, when I go to bed, I say to myself, “Phew! I did not kill anyone today.”

You go to sleep with your soul in peace.

Yes, my soul in peace, truly.

We will be back in just a moment to learn Mr. Legendre’s secrets in spreading the vegetarian message. You are watching Vegetarian Elite on Supreme Master Television.

So there is a kind of guilt that has emerged now because you must really not live on this planet to have not seen the cruelty that we inflict onto animals. When you eat a pig, well, that pig might have endured 12 hours of agony before dying and finding itself in your plate. So you cannot pretend that you do not know because now, we have seen that and we talk about it a lot.

Welcome back to Vegetarian Elite on Supreme Master Television. Today, we are talking to famous, multi-talented actor, and Québec crowd favorite, Mr. Joël Legendre. As a dedicated vegetarian, Mr. Legendre supports numerous activities that promote this diet as a part of a healthy lifestyle. He is, amongst others, a spokesperson for the Eat Well Expo and Living Green since 2008. Every year, the fair unites under one roof more than 200 exhibitors of products and services related to the wellbeing of the body, mind, soul, and the environment – and vegetarianism is front and center.

Everybody who goes there has a smile on their face because we taste a whole bunch of things, we eat a lot of stuff. We come with our recycled bag and we fill it up with a whole bunch of things. We do our grocery shopping for the year, for the week, for life. We meet wonderful people. There are public speakers who are there also to motivate us. And everything is done, I would say, in a fun way. And I am proud to be a spokesperson for that because I know very well that people who come in will come out transformed. And there is a little bit of myself in that and I am happy because every year, more and more people come to the expo. And more and more people take their health at heart or want to start somewhere.

Mr. Legendre sees that the trend for vegetarianism is accelerating all around the world. He reveals to us his own secret of encouraging conscious living by being a good example.

I always told myself that I wanted to inspire people. So when I have people over for supper, I of course always serve vegetarian food. When I am invited over to their house, I always bring a dish because people are not at ease, they do not know what to serve you. I say, “Cook what you were going to cook for everybody. I will take care of the vegetarian part.” It is my mission and it makes me happy to do it. So I bring a dish and I make photocopies of the recipe, but I do not take them out. But I am convinced that after everybody will have tasted it, they will say “Oh, that is so good. My God, we could prepare this at home. Do you have the recipe?” I have the recipe and then, I become the missionary of vegetarian recipes and I give out my recipe to everyone. And I know that slowly but surely, those people will maybe, once a week, eat a vegetarian meal.

So when will we see a vegetarian cookbook by Joël Legendre?

Very soon to say the truth. Yes, I have signed with an editor. Yes, it will happen very soon.

Oh! And we are awaiting this for next fall?

For the year 2010.

Oh 2010, excellent!

This fall, yes.

I am in the midst of that right now.

What a great idea!

Yes, and it will be a book that will be decadent.

But without meat.

Well exactly, because people find it complicated to be vegetarian and they think that they will not be eating anything.

On the contrary, yes.

So your book will undo that myth.

Exactly. So over 150 recipes easy to prepare, healthy, and especially tasty.

According to Mr. Legendre, vegetarianism not only enables him to remain very active, but it also ensures he’ll be able to appreciate the wonders of everyday life with his cherished loved ones.

But I believe that being vegetarian is, first and foremost, renewing our vital energy. The fact remains that eating meat is demanding on the body, on the digestive tract and all that. But being vegetarian gives me all that energy that I have to be able to do a million things, to sleep about 4 or 5 hours per night, to not need more than that. So it allows me to do a lot of things and to enjoy life; life is so short!

Not that I am running after something, but I like to take advantage of every moment. And I like to be able to see the sunrise in the morning, and in the evening, to go to bed as late as possible to enjoy the day, and to take care of myself to be able to be with my child for as long as possible. So, of course, if I drink two rum and cokes and eat a big steak with potatoes every night, well, chances are that I will not see my child grow as long. For me, it is so important. It is the most important thing.

On next week’s Vegetarian Elite, Mr. Joël Legendre will talk to us about his spirituality and championing the welfare of children. He will also share with us his visions of a perfect world, and the extraordinary story of meeting his adopted son Lambert for the first time, something he had foreseen since childhood.

So right then and there, I knew that that child was my child and that I was his parent. It was really predestined. And I believe that when you adopt a child, it is the soul that seeks out the soul of the parent, that seeks out the soul of the child.

Thank you for joining us today on Vegetarian Elite. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Between Master and Disciples, coming up next. May your life be blessed with abundant health and inner peace.