Ladysmith Cemetery is located at 320 Christie Road. It is Ladysmith’s only cemetery and was created in 1904 when the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway (E&N Railway) donated a five acre parcel to Ladysmith for use as a cemetery.

Ladysmith Cemetery is operated and maintained by the City of Ladysmith. It was added to the Ladysmith Community Heritage Register in 2017.

Here is a map showing the location of Ladysmith Cemetery:

Here is a Google Street View image of the entrance to Ladysmith Cemetery:

Description of Historic Place

The Ladysmith Cemetery is located on the northern edge of the community. The historic place is confined to the legal boundaries of the cemetery.

Heritage Value

Established in 1904, the Ladysmith Cemetery is a tangible link with the community’s social, cultural and economic history. The original division of the cemetery into quadrants by religious denomination provides evidence of the importance of those categories as markers of social identification in the young community. Over time, religion became less important as a social distinction and people of all denominations were buried in all quadrants. In addition, the headstones provide evidence of the community’s population composition.

Unlike nearby Nanaimo, which was developed predominantly by English and Scottish settlers, the headstones at Ladysmith Cemetery indicate an ethnically diverse population that included significant numbers of Italians, Finns, Belgians and other ethnic groups. Most poignantly, many headstones tell of deaths due to mining accidents, a common occurrence in Ladysmith history. As a whole, the cemetery functions as a fully accessible outdoor
classroom of Ladysmith history.

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Ladysmith Cemetery are:

• – all the elements within the legal boundaries of the Ladysmith Cemetery including the mature plantings and pathway inlaid brass markers that indicate the original religious quadrants
• – all of the historic headstones that reflect Ladysmith’s early ethnic diversity and mining history

Here are some graves of historical interest in Ladysmith Cemetery:

Joseph Mairs (1892-1914)

We will be adding more graves in future.