Verner is a community of about 1,000 residents, located in the Canadian province of Ontario, in the municipality of West Nipissing. The community is located on the Veuve River (Rivière Veuve), at the western junction of highways 17 and 64, approximately 16 km (10 miles) west of Sturgeon Falls. The largely francophone community serves as an agricultural hub for the surrounding area and offers a consumers' cooperative and farm equipment dealers.
History
The area was founded mainly through the efforts of the Reverend Charles Alfred Marie Paradis, an Oblate missionary to the Temiskaming Region of Northeastern Ontario in the 1880s. During his travels throughout the northeast, he identified the area around what would become Verner as being ideal for agriculture and, after his retirement from his missionary posting in 1890, he took up farming on the shores of the Veuve River. Eventually, Paradis succeeded in convincing a number of French Canadian families who had taken up residence in Michigan to set up homesteads near his farm in what has now become the community of Verner. The town was named for the wife of Canadian Pacific Railway superintendent Archer Baker who oversaw the laying of track through West Nipissing in the 1880s. In the 1800s, Verner was originally named Burnside.
Famous people
France Gareau - Olympic Athlete
