hortly after they moved into their home in Sillery, Anthony's father converted the completely finished basement into a manufacturing laboratory and converted the two huge garages into a stockroom and filling and bottling room.

Workmen started assembling huge stainless steel tanks (well, they certainly seemed huge then, but by today's standards they were pretty small) with motors, valves and pumps in their beautiful recreation room i the basement of their new house. Not really knowing what was going on, the two boys watched for days as all this equipment was being assembled.

Old Matonol label

This room was going to be forever different, but little did Anthony know that this was the beginning of a process that would bring the greatest health-giving product to the world, 50 years or so later. There wasn't going to be any room for the two boys to do battle with their toy soldiers and tanks. The recreation room had now been transformed into a full-blown manufacturing laboratory. For whatever reasons only known to Anthony's dad, he began producing his whole body tonic under the name Matonol.

From that moment on, Lauretta, Norman, and Anthony worked for their dad's company at one time or another. The first employee in the production was a fellow by the name of Edgar Laflamme. Norman and Anthony learned from him how to glue labels on bottles and how to fill bottles and how to pack boxes - they had the greatest time of their lives.

Old Matonol bottle

Anthony and his brother helped their dad empty bags and measure leaves, roots and barks into these shiny stainless steel tanks to begin the process of making extracts for his preparation. Their dad prepared the extracts from the raw herbs by means of the age-old, tried-and-true method of getting everything of value out of each part; i.e. percolation by means of hot water. After many processes and measurements and plenty of trial and error, as well as a lot of sampling and much tasting, Anthony's father had formulated his special preparation that we now know as JC Tonic^®.

Even with all that was going on and the remodeling of Anthony's home, the children, all youngsters, had other things on their mind and never did have the curiosity to ask what their dad was mixing and blending with all the green things which was eventually bottled in their basement. Anthony recalls helping out periodically during the summer holidays gluing labels on the bottles, and he remembered the only bottles his dad could find during World War II were 40-ounce used whiskey bottles that were cleaned up and sterilized. We still have some of the original labels that were printed in those days and used on his product.

Once the first sales of the product began and word spread about the results people were obtaining, sales of this then-called product, MATONOL, flourished.