Photo: Fdesjardins · CC BY 3.0Each person Ottawa public library serves borrows 7.6 items, more than at 91% of Ontario’s town libraries
Ottawa public library serves the whole of Ottawa, so the library figures on this page are the city’s: 1,083,550 people, Vars among them. Visits ran to 3.4 per person served in 2024. Visits here are a typical week’s count times 52, Ontario’s method, so read them as an estimate.
C+Civic life#498 of 866 in OntarioBehind Vars’s civic life grade
Vars gets a C+ for civic life, #498 of 866 towns graded in Ontario. Vars has every input a civic life grade uses: library visits per resident, charities per 1,000 residents and the province’s volunteering rate.
Informal groups and mutual aid go uncounted.
Sources: provincial statistics, the CRA, Statistics Canada.
1,975 registered charities give a Ottawa mailing address
There is no count for Vars on its own: the charities are those of all of Ottawa. It works out to 1.7 per 1,000 residents, where the typical Ontario town has 1.4 and Canada’s 1.4. Counting by mailing address favors a service town, where the surrounding area’s charities get their mail, over the suburbs and countryside around it.
32.1%
Between 31.0% and 33.2% of people in Ontario volunteered formally in 2023, 32.1% at the estimate’s middle; that is one figure for the province, which ranges from 25.2% to 40.3% nationally.
Statistics Canada, table 45-10-0039.
Ahead of most of Ontario’s town libraries on 2 of 3 measures
Measured per person served against the 195 town libraries of Ontario’s 2024 statistics.
Town libraries only; regional systems left out.
A typical week brings about 70,779 visits
The year 2024 at Ottawa public library, in the library’s own counts.
The closest is 6.5 km from Vars
Nearest first, measured in a straight line from the centre of Vars.
What this data can and can’t tell you
- Library locations. The locations come from OpenStreetMap and from Statistics Canada’s cultural facilities list of 2020, public libraries only.
Questions about the library and civic life in Vars
Does Vars have a public library?
No library is mapped inside Vars, and the nearest one is The Nation Public Library - Limoges Branch in Limoges.
How busy is Ottawa public library?
In 2024 it logged 3,680,508 in-person visits and 8,205,895 loans.
Library statistics: Ontario Public Library Statistics, 2024. Library locations: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) and Statistics Canada, Open Database of Cultural and Art Facilities (2020). Charities: Canada Revenue Agency, List of charities (2024), charitable organizations only.
Adapted from Statistics Canada (Census of Population 2021, population estimates 2025, 2021 census boundaries) under the Statistics Canada Open Licence; this does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada. Neighbourhood names in some cities © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).