history of soy yogurt, soy acidophilus milk and other ... - SoyInfo Center

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• Summary: George was born on 1 Dec. 1946 in Toronto,
Ontario, Canada. He went to high school in Toronto but
did not graduate, and he never attended college. “I attended
the school of hard knocks.” He dropped out of high school
at age 15 he began to work full-time. At age 17 he went to
work for a textile fi rm until he was age 20. Then he started
his own business in the fi elds of textiles and clothing. In
1967 he married Wendy Lynn Richardson–who was born on
27 Sept. 1948. In 1973 he received knowledge from Guru
Maraji (via Guru Charanan) in Toronto, became his disciple,
traveled throughout the United States and (in 1973) to the
Houston Astrodome [in Texas] with Guru Charanan, and
started a vegetarian diet and vegetarian restaurant. In 1977
he was one of the founding partners of Jolly Green Garden, a
vegetarian restaurant in Toronto. He called it “Guru Maraji’s
restaurant” because many of the employees and customers
were disciples of Guru Maraji. There he fi rst got involved
with soyfoods. He bought tofu and used it to make various
products, such as patties, dressings, etc., which were served
in the restaurant. George has been involved with soyfoods
for more than 20 years, starting in Toronto.
In early 1979 George and his family moved to
southern Alberta. He went to work for the Canadian federal
government helping a group of native Blackfeet people there.
He set up a company named Pe-Kun-nee Garments that
manufactured textiles (garments), put 300 women through
a training program, and ran it (with the title of General
Manager) for about 4 years. George still has the full-beaded
outfi t and feathers that he got from the Blackfeet people he
helped.
In 1984 George and his family moved to Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, where he started a computerized embroidery
business. His wife and three children still run this as a family
business. Today his company is one of the top software
development fi rms in North America for computerized
embroidery. He worked for a company named Jeffrey E.
McPherson, headquartered in Nottingham, England, with
North American offi ces in Greensboro, North Carolina
and in Canada; George worked for the North Carolina
company. They held the worldwide distribution rights for an
embroidery machine made by a Japanese company named
Barudan (pronounced buh-ROO-dun) who pioneered the
electronic embroidery machine from Japan. The ancient
Jacquard looms, which were programmed with punch cards,
originated in Switzerland [sic]–which is why we refer to
“Swiss embroidery.” [Note: The French inventor, Joseph-
Marie Jacquard (lived 1752-1834) invented the Jacquard
loom at Lyons, France, in 1801 and was awarded a patent
and medal by Napoleon in 1804]. The Japanese copied these
looms. George was a salesman for their equipment, and
he developed a collection of baseball caps because he was
one of the fi rst people to sell caps–whether it be importers
of blank caps or embroiders of fi nished caps. George even
HISTORY OF SOY YOGURT & CULTURED SOYMILK 455
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called himself Captain Capman. He went around and set
up embroidery companies to whom he sold his embroidery
equipment (from Barudan in Japan) all over western Canada.
George was one of the fi rst people to embroider a baseball
team insignia direct onto the blank hat–replacing the old
crest that was stuck on the hat. It was much classier, and now
its the only way they do it.
In 1992 he started another gourmet vegetarian (actually
vegan) restaurant, this time named Sweet Carrot Café,
located at 702 14th St. East, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N
0P7. Actually, George bought the building for his embroidery
business, then opened up a corner of one building on the
corner as a lunchroom for his staff. It was an historical
building, with three buildings in one. George bought an
espresso machine for his lunchroom. Passersby thought
it should be a coffee shop. George lined the walls of his
lunchroom with his collection of embroidered baseball caps.
He soon converted the lunchroom into a coffee bar, which
he named it Caps Coffee Bar. A popular men item was Cappuccino!
There was a grand piano in the dining room. It was
probably the only vegetarian or vegan restaurant ever to be
written up in Where to Eat in Canada–two years in a row.
In those days most people thought of vegetarian restaurants
as places where hippies with beards and long hair sat on
picnic benches and ate granola bars. Most people were afraid
to eat in such places, so George made his restaurant into
a fi ne dining room. One of the main focuses of George’s
life since the 1970s has been vegetarianism; his wife is a
vegan and teaches tai-chi. In the restaurant George made his
own tofu, soymilk, and related products, such as spreads,
dressings, etc. In the early days, he made these products in
the old fashioned way. The fi rm nigari tofu was very good
tasting but the soymilk had a pronounced beany fl avor. He
was so busy, and making all these foods was such a chore,
that he began looking for other technologies to expand
his production. One day in early 1992, at about the time
Raj Gupta started publishing his SoyaCow Newsletter, a
young lady from the United Way in Ottawa came into the
restaurant and commented on his organic tofu sandwich.
She also tried his soymilk and told him about a soymilk
making machine named the SoyaCow, developed by a
company named ProSoya in Ontario. George asked for more
information and the lady sent him a copy of the newsletter.
George immediately phoned Raj Gupta, the inventor of the
machine, and was on the next airplane to Ottawa. He ended
up buying the only small SoyaCow (SC-20) Raj had. Articles
about George, his stylish restaurant, and his new SoyaCow
appeared in two early issues of the SoyaCow Newsletter
(Jan/March and April/June 1993–Vol. 2, Nos. 1 and 2).
He used the SoyaCow to make soymilk, which he sold
at his restaurant–starting in early 1993. This was the fi rst
commercial soymilk ever produced by a SoyaCow. He sold
the soymilk in 1 liter glass bottles, with the SoyaCow logo
printed directly on the glass on each bottle. He and Frank