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Our Past

Where we've come from.

The Ladysmith area has been home to the Chemainus First Nation for at least 5,000 years. Before European settlement, their camps, resource harvesting places and special cultural sites existed at several locations along both shores of Ladysmith Harbour. Change began to take hold in 1884 when an E&N Railway grant to James Dunsmuir privatized many of the local lands. Dunsmuir opened a coal mine in nearby Extension in the early 1900s and he soon needed a place to house the miners and a port from which to ship the coal—and thus Ladysmith was born. Dunsmuir incorporated the town in 1904, naming it after the town of Ladysmith in South Africa.

Coal mining dominated the local economy in the first decades of the twentieth century. However, by the 1920s demand for coal began to decline, and in 1931 the Extension mine was closed for good. The economy switched gears when the Comox Logging and Railway Company began logging in the area in 1936. By the 1940s, Ladysmith was at the centre of several major logging operations. Since then, logging and milling lumber have continued to play an integral part in the town’s economic development. The oyster fishery has also thrived, and pleasure boating and tourism have become important economic pillars.