People in Sioux Lookout, Ont., expressed shock and outrage after reading derogatory comments about their town in a brochure distributed to local businesses.

The brochure, a type of business directory distributed to hotels in the community, said Sioux Lookout was "full of drunks" and "a dirty little town." It also suggested people living in the community should move.

Mayor Kathy Poling said the Edmonton publishing company responsible for the brochure took the description of the community from a user-edited online encyclopedia, without proofreading it or checking the facts.

"It does not reflect who we are as a community," Poling said. "There are many, many positive things that are happening in Sioux Lookout, and quite honestly, I don't know how a company with any integrity could have allowed a publication like that to get as far as it did."

The company involved, Sabre Publishing Ltd., purchased advertising space to publish a public apology in the latest issue of the local paper.

"I regret than an article posted on the internet was carelessly printed on brochures I supply to local hotels," company president Neil Bryan said in the ad.

"That article does not reflect the opinion of myself or the staff here. It was a simple oversight."

The publisher said he called all of the hotels that received the offending brochure and asked them to pull it. The error was caught before the pamphlets were placed in any hotel rooms, he said.

New brochures with a "proper history of Sioux Lookout" are being printed, Bryan said, although some local businesses told the Sioux Lookout Bulletin they would not distribute the reprints.

More than 5,300 people live in Sioux Lookout, located about 400 kilometres east of Winnipeg in northern Ontario.