Annual No One Eats Alone Dinner in Sudbury continues without the councillor who started it all

The annual No One Eats Alone Dinner in Sudbury is set to continue this year without its founder, the late city councillor, Michael Vagnini.

Vagnini started the holiday tradition — in which people are invited to a community Christmas dinner — in 2015.

"When we started this, we found that a lot of people were alone, more so than what we thought," said Caroline Susteric, a long-serving co-organizer, who will lead this year's event.

"And so they started coming, and now, year after year, we're getting those repeat people and we're getting new people."

Vagnini died in February, but Susteric said it was important for everyone involved with past dinners to keep it going in his absence.

"I think he'd be so happy and he'd be so happy that we're doing this because it just meant everything to him to do this," Susteric said.

Susteric said Vagnini started the tradition when he was a councillor and noticed a lot of people in the community were spending the holidays alone.

"People meant everything to Michael. That was what Michael was all about," she said.

The first dinner took place at the Italian Club in Copper Cliff.

Susteric said they had no idea what to expect, but 124 people showed up.

They continued to host it at the Italian Club for a few years, but later switched to the Northbury Hotel, which could accommodate more people, and was more accessible for people with disabilities. That hotel is now called the Days Inn.

Although organizers had to cancel the dinner for two years during the COVD-19 pandemic, Susteric said it's been a success otherwise.

"It just makes me feel good to see that 250 people can actually sit at the same table, or at the same tables, with people they don't know and they're having a ball," she said.