Vars Community Information

The Bearbrook area was first colonized in 1824 and by 1836 a small settlement had begun to form. The brook originally got its name from the plentiful amount of bears that foraged on acorns produced from the large quantities of oaks found alongside its sides. A sawmill operation used logs that had been channelled down through Bear Brook, and which continued on eastward to the South Nation River, the Ottawa River and finally to the St. Lawrence Seaway. In 1881, a train station was built and the area was named Bearbrook Station which would help transport logs towards the St. Lawrence. In 1886, the community reached a large enough population to gain a post office. Bearbrook Station was difficult to distinguish from the nearby community of Bearbrook and so was renamed.

There are two stories for the origin of the name Vars: the first, is that with the building of the new post office, the people of Bearbrook Station decided to name the community after the four people who brought the post office to the area: Mc(V)eigh, (A)rmstrong, (R)onan, and (S)mith. The second story is that the town was given the name by a retired priest from Embrun, Abbé C. Guillaume, in memory of the village of Vars, Hautes-Alpes, in France.

Community overview retrieved from http://neighbourhoodstudy.ca/vars/.