'Warm soup for warm hearts' in downtown Sudbury

It was business as usual for Sue Peters on October 31.

She was packing up to go home after a day working at her downtown Sudbury caf, the Cedar Nest,when she realized that her laptop was missing.

The laptop contained a lot of her business and personal information.

It didn't take Peters long to figure out that someone had stolen it during business hours.

"I was kind of shocked at first," said Peters. "Who would do something like this when we're open . . . I became instantly angered," she said.

Peters says she lashed out about the theft on Facebook just in case someone happened to find it.

"I got into anger, then despair," said Peters. "It was an awful feeling."

On the streets around her caf, business owners have been dealing with crime, drug use and open drug deals. A few weeks ago, a young man was killed in a daylight stabbingjust a few blocks from her business.

Her patio hasbeen vandalized and her caf broken into during the summer.

But she was heartened by the positive reaction to her Facebook post.

"There are more good people in this world than there are bad," she said.

Peters came up with the idea of this "big, human hand-holding chain of peace going around the downtown like a big, warm hug," she explained.

Another business owner, Deke Zaher of Zaher's Small Batch Hummus, came up with the idea of giving away soup.

"He coined the phrase 'Warm soup for warm hearts' and we decided to make it a bigger thing," said Peters.

"We're going to pass soup from his shop on Elgin all the way down to my place, down to Durham Street, and all the way down to the soup kitchen," said Peters.

The event takes place Tuesday, December 10 starting at 10:30 a.m.

Peters adds that students from Marymount Academy will be helping out.

Peters and Zaher will also be collecting toonies to help out two downtown businesses that recently suffered fire and smoke damage.

She guesstimates that over 200 bowls of soup will be be passed through downtown Sudbury to the soup kitchen at the Samaritan Centre.

As for the downtown people who some describe as a little rough-looking, Peters says they're just people.

"They're somebody's children . . . they're somebody's uncle or aunt or mother," she said.

"They all need help and they all need the support from other people," she added.