Northern Lights Festival Boréal

Northern Lights Festival Boréal
Genre	Folk, rock
Dates	First weekend in July
Location(s)	Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
Years active	1972-present
Website
Northern Lights Festival Boréal

Northern Lights Festival Boréal is an annual folk festival in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's oldest music festival, in continuous operation since 1972. Although the Mariposa Folk Festival is nominally older, that festival was defunct from 1980 to 1981.

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, Ken Whiteley, Paul Dunn and Charlie Angus. The award is named for Jackie Washington, a blues musician who performed at the festival 25 of the 38 years between its inauguration and his death. Also awarded each year is the "Bernie Melanson Volunteer Award", named after one of the original founding members of NLFB and given to individuals or groups who have given long standing and/or exceptional volunteer service to the festival.

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.

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