The Honorable Shannon Smallwood was appointed Judge of the Northwest Territories Supreme Court in 2011. Prior to her appointment, Chief Justice Smallwood was Senior Counsel and Team Leader in the Canadian Public Prosecution Service at Yellowknife since 2008, and was Crown Advocate from 2005 to 2008. She was an attorney in the Auxiliary Service International of the Canadian Department of Justice in Ottawa in 2005, and Crown Advocate in Yellowknife from 2000 to 2004. Her main field of work was criminal law.
Since her appointment to the Northwest Territories Supreme Court, Chief Justice Smallwood has chaired the Criminal Council and the Court’s Bar Committee and has been involved in the education of judges through the National Judicial Institute. She is a former member of the Canadian Bar Association and has also served on the Bar Committee (Provincial and Supreme Court), the Admissions Committee and the Disciplinary Committee of the Law Society of the Northwest Territories.
Chief Justice Smallwood is of Kashugutan descent and hails from Fort Good Hope (Radley Coe, Northwest Territories. She received her Bachelor of Arts in 1993 and Bachelor of Laws in 1999 from the University of Calgary Northwest Territories in 2000.
