Blueberry Festival Sioux Lookout's annual Blueberry Festival has been held the first week of August since 1983. 2022 marks the 40th anniversary of the festival, which celebrates the town and its surrounding environment. The festival includes a number of sporting events (slo-pitch, beach volleyball, bocce, tennis, and golf tournaments) along with charitable fundraisers, blueberry themed food, historical walks, musical performances including the Sioux Mountain Music Festival, a car and truck show, a farmers' market, and much more. The town mascot and face of the festival, Blueberry Bert, makes frequent appearances around town throughout the duration of the festival.
Outdoor activities Hunting and fishing are popular pastimes in Sioux Lookout. The annual Walleye Weekend Tournament, organized by the Sioux Lookout Anglers and Hunters Group, is held the second weekend of June with several cash prizes available to be won. Numerous hunting and fishing camps, as well as fly-in fishing lodges, also operate in the area. These include: Anderson's Lodge, Frog Rapids Camp, Fireside Lodge, Webster's Lodge and Moosehorn Lodge among many others.
Ecotourism is growing rapidly with outfitters such as Goldwater Expeditions providing kayak, ski, and snowshoe rentals while also providing ecology based adventures, cultural education, and ecological interpretation.
Sites of interest • Sioux Mountain • Cedar Bay Recreational Facilities •
Ojibway Provincial Park Arts Sioux Lookout is home to a creative habitat, encouraging creatives to pursue and grow in their craft.
Literature Peggy Sanders, awarded the
Order of Canada in October 2006, is Sioux Lookout's leading literary figure. She was praised by the
Governor-General for "bridging cultures...and building relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities for decades". She continued to note that Sanders was: "a founding member of the local anti-racism committee...and has championed literacy by founding the town's first public library." Patricia Ningewance Nadeau, from the
Lac Seul First Nation, is on the board of directors at the Indigenous Language Institute. She has published a textbook on the
Ojibwe language: ''Talking Gookom's Language
and five other books. She was the first editor of Wawatay News'' in Sioux Lookout. Richard Schwindt, former resident of Sioux Lookout, published a collection of short stories titled
Dreams and Sioux Nights in 2003. Most of the characters and settings are based upon Sioux Lookout and the surrounding area.
Phillip Neault-Pioneer is a collection of songs and stories told by Mae Carroll to her grandchildren. Her book, edited by James R. Stevens, takes place in the two railroad towns of
Fort William and Sioux Lookout in pioneer times. The Sioux Lookout Anti-Racism Committee was a winner of the 23rd Annual Human Rights Media Awards, presented by the League for Human Rights of
B'nai Brith Canada, for "their web site which deals with the effects and strategies of dealing with issues of racism and resources and strategies to deal with instances of racism". The town also appears as a prominent figure in the novel,
The Cunning Man by
Robertson Davies. Sioux Lookout is also a feature in
Paulette Jiles' novel
North Spirit: Travels Among the Cree and Ojibway Nations and Their Star Maps published in 1995 by
Doubleday Canada.
Music Lawrence Martin, a
Juno Award-winning musician, was the mayor of Sioux Lookout during the 1990s. Martin is now mayor of
Cochrane, and was once a member of the
TVOntario board of directors. Also, a concert series called S.L.Y.M (Sioux Lookout Youth Music) Productions supplies the town with local and out-of- town bands for the town's ear drums. To date, S.L.Y.M has featured the local bands of Darkness Deprived, Red Radio, Double Helix, and The Four Ohms. S.L.Y.M. also regularly hosts open coffee houses to showcase local acoustic talent. The Sioux Lookout Cultural Centre for Youth and the Arts is under construction and will include a recording studio for aspiring local artists.
Film Sioux Lookout appears as the setting for the fictional town Autumn Springs, in the film of the same name, "Autumn Springs."
Sports Sioux Lookout was home to the
Sioux Lookout Flyers, a Junior A team in the
Superior International Junior Hockey League, which folded in 2012. Also hosted every year is a
First Nations hockey tournament.
Ryan Parent, first round
National Hockey League (NHL)
draft pick and two-time
IIHF World Junior Championship champion, was raised in Sioux Lookout. Parent returns to his home town during the off-season. As a member of the Canadian World Juniors team, Parent won two consecutive gold medals in
2006 and
2007. He was a first-round draft pick (18th overall) of the
Nashville Predators in the 2005 NHL entry draft and was traded to the
Philadelphia Flyers on 17 February 2007. Ryan Parent officially joined the NHL when he was recalled from the Flyer's
American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate team the
Philadelphia Phantoms on 13 February 2008 and took a place on the roster. The Sioux Lookout Bombers is a junior ice hockey franchise of the Superior International Junior Hockey League (SIJHL) based in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, Canada. It debuted as an expansion franchise in the 2022–23 SIJHL season. ==Infrastructure==