Marconi Club still loyal to Italian roots but now includes multicultural events

The Guglielmo Marconi Society, established in 1912 as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to Italian culture in Sault Ste. Marie, is still very active and committed to its original purpose, its landmark building located on Albert Street West.

Known for its Italian food, the Marconi Club - as it was known for over a century - remains a banquet hall for wedding receptions, bridal showers, stag and does, graduations and corporate events.

In recent years, the Marconi Club opened its arms to embrace other cultures, their food and events, and has officially changed its name to the Marconi Multicultural Event Centre. 

“The city’s become multicultural,” said Stephen MacNamara, the centre's general manager.

“We have a strong Italian community, Finnish community, but now it's multicultural. There are people here from different parts of the world like India, China, the Philippines, Central American and South American countries, African countries. The Indian community is something around 3,000 people. That’s amazing.”

“We started to meet with all the cultural groups in town, like the people from India, the Philippines and the Northern Ontario Latin-Hispanic Association and have them in. We had meetings with everybody to put together events here that would not only be Italian - even though the Italian community is a big part of this building still - and we’ve opened it up to everybody so we came up with the title Marconi Multicultural Event Centre,” MacNamara said.

“Some of our staff are from India and they tell me how they have no place to meet so we’ve done some parties for them, and for their next party, I’m hoping they’re going to let us join them in the kitchen to learn how to prepare their foods. The other day we had butter chicken at the buffet and we’ve also had Latin-Hispanic and Ukrainian food.”     

“We have the Missanabie Cree as partners. We did a couple of dinners for them and we also used some of their recipes for parties, like the bannock bread with berries and Indigenous soup,” MacNamara said.

The Marconi building includes not only the main banquet hall and its kitchen but also the Tempo lunch buffet and event space, Minelli’s takeout and Rollers Bocce.

Rollers Bocce includes three fully renovated bocce courts, HD TVs, and a mini-lounge with food and drinks.

Many groups - such as service clubs, labour unions, yoga clubs and martial arts clubs - utilize the building’s facilities.

Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25 also has a temporary home for its office and lounge within the Marconi building until its new facility on Great Northern Road is completed.

Though the Marconi has gone multicultural, The G. Marconi Society, and the Elettra Marconi Society - the Society’s ladies branch - is still very active.

“The Marconi is back to being elegant and glamorous again and the food is good,” MacNamara said, stating that bringing Minelli’s into the building is a high point.

Minelli’s - a popular presence on the Sault’s food scene for decades, first with a dine-in restaurant on Great Northern Road, then with a takeout on Pine Street -  relocated at the Marconi as a takeout with its original recipes earlier this year.

“I had to have their cappelletti. I’ve enjoyed that all my life,” MacNamara smiled.

MacNamara made arrangements to refurbish Minelli's kitchen equipment and move it to the Marconi in June.

The Marconi is now also distributing its food to local businesses such as RJ's Market and hopes to distribute it to other communities along Highway 17 east of the Sault.

“Something that we’re looking at is to provide food services to large companies and smaller companies, to ship over our food in bulk, prepared or frozen. We are approaching organizations in this town to take over their food services, to sell our food to their lunch rooms. We’re offering to companies to help with their food services,” MacNamara said.

“We’re making ourselves open to business.”