When Charles Robertson set out to honour his late mother, he knew exactly how she would have felt about having her name on a fund at the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area.

"Being an actress, I knew she would be in love with her name," he said with a laugh. "That's not my personality, but I know that's her personality."

Valerie Robertson came to Kingston from Newcastle, England, after marrying Charles's father, a Kingston-born actor she met while both were working in repertory theatre. He had gone to England to try his luck on the stage, winning Best Actor in Canada along the way, and was later offered a job at Stratford. But with a young family, he came home instead, and together with a group of British expats, the couple helped found Domino Theatre. Valerie arrived wary of Canada, having been told the houses had tin roofs and wolves wandered the streets.

"Being an actress, I knew she would be in love with her name. That's not my personality, but I know that's her personality."

While her husband pursued mainstream theatre, Valerie made her mark as a teacher. She worked with kids who had few opportunities, ran programs in prisons, and was a fierce advocate for women. Rosemary Doyle of Theatre Kingston was among her students.

"My mom was very into women's politics and women actors, and helped a lot of girls who went on to do big things," Charles said. "I thought it would be nice to get her name out there."

Established in 2020, the Valerie Robertson Women in Theatre Fund supports arts and culture with a focus on theatre projects, especially those encouraging young women's participation and growth. As an endowment, it grants every year in perpetuity. To date it has granted roughly $10,000 to theatre projects across the region, including Theatre Kingston's Friends Fest, the Spire Transformation Project, H'art Centre, which creates theatre with people with disabilities, and North Frontenac Little Theatre.

For Charles, a playwright and longtime theatre educator himself, the fund extends his mother's influence to a new generation. Teaching young performers at Bottle Tree Productions, he saw firsthand what theatre gives young people.

"We joked that we weren't making many actors, but we certainly were making a lot of engineers," he said. "Kids would get confidence, so they could do whatever they wanted."

Theatre is a tough world, he acknowledges, and funding is hard to come by. That's what makes an endowment like this one meaningful to him: it keeps granting, year after year, long after the curtain falls.

"I thought that would be nice for my mom," he said. "Just extending."

If you would like to support arts and culture in KFL&A, donate to the:

 Valerie Roberston Women in Theatre Fun