WHAT'S IN A NAME?

When we, my husband Terry and I, first arrived on the Island and were looking for a place to settle down, it was the town of Ladysmith that appealed the most and so we bought a home here.

We had both been very active in the entertainment and theatre business in Alberta but when we arrived on the Island we decided to take a rest from it.

Terry was working away from home, and I was enjoying my new garden and was busy going here, there, and everywhere, and generally having fun playing 'tourist.' However, when I first saw that huge sign 'Bottle Depot' which was then the backdrop to the lovely Bob Stewart Park, I do remember saying "I think 'Ladysmiths Little Theatre' would look much nicer on that wall, or maybe a mural instead." and it was at this time that the seed was planted and the idea for a live theatre of our own began to grow.

However, it was not until after I read the romantic account of the courtship and marriage  between Lady Juana Maria Smith and Sir Harry Smith that the name 'Ladysmiths Little Theatre'  became 'Lady Smith's Little Theatre.' 

Juana Maria de los Dolores de Leon was only fourteen years old when she married  Henry George Wakelyn Smith, or Harry, as he prefered to be called, a twenty four year old Captain in the British army. Juana Maria and her sister had lost their home and possesions to British troops after the Spanish Town Of Badajez  had been sieged in March 1812.

As was the tradition after conquering a town, the troops had free reign to do as they pleased. Fearing for their lives the sisters had fled their home which was being ransacked. With blood pouring from their ear lobes, their earings having been ripped out by drunken, rowdy soldiers the nearly unconscious Juana Maria aided by her sister, had made it to the outskirts of the town where British officers, including Harry Smith, had set up camp. Once there they had appealed for protection from the very same army that had besieged their town.

From the moment he had laid eyes upon her Harry had fallen in love with the lovely Juana Maria, and in his own words has written,

"A being more transcendingly lovely I had never before seen, one more amiable I have never yet known! Fourteen summers had not yet passed over her youthful countenance, which was of a delicate freshness more English than Spanish. Her face, though not perhaps rigidly beautiful, was nevertheless so remarkably handsome, and so irresistibly attractive, surmounting a figure cast in nature's fairest mould, that to look at her was to love her; and I did love her."

Juana Maria in turn, fell in love with Harry and within days of their meeting, the regimental chaplain joined them in holy matrimony. Just fourteen years old Juana Maria de los Dolores de Leon became just plain Mrs Harry Smith. The only thing that marred their happiness during those early years was Juana's family decided to severe all ties with her once they learned she had married outside her Spanish family. For the rest of her life, Juana never knew any reconciliation.

They were quite obviously great lovers, and hated to be apart.They suffered much hardship and deprivation as Juana, a true 'camp follower' wanted always to be close to her husband and was often camped close to the battle scene through many a campaign. Although their marriage was childless, their devotion to each other is well documented with many references to a happy and loving marriage that lasted forty years.