Northern Lights Festival Boréal
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Northern Lights Festival Boréal is an annual folk festival in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's oldest music festival in continuous operation — although the Mariposa Folk Festival is nominally older, that festival was defunct from 1979 to 1984.
The bilingual festival is held in Bell Park, including the Grace Hartman Amphitheatre, on the shore of the city's Lake Ramsey. It presents a diverse program of music in a variety of genres, arts, crafts and children's entertainment.
The festival is usually held on the first weekend in July, although it was postponed until the last weekend of the month in 1988 to serve as the cultural festival for the 1988 World Junior Championships in Athletics, which were held in the city.
The festival presents an annual Jackie Washington Award for distinguished contribution to Northern Ontario's cultural life. Past winners of the award have included Robert Paquette and Charlie Angus. The award is named for Jackie Washington, a blues musician who was one of the festival's earliest and most loyal supporters.
Artists at the 2007 festival included Ron Sexsmith, Leahy, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Peter Case, Les Breastfeeders, Oh Susanna, Peter Elkas, Ox, Kim Barlow and Torngat.
