Sheila MacPherson, an NWT lawyer who has spent her career in northern Canada, is the NWT Supreme Court’s newest judge.
Justice MacPherson, as she will now be known, rose to become a partner in Lawson Lundell’s Yellowknife office and served as the territorial legislature’s law clerk for more than 25 years.
Raised in Iqaluit, MacPherson was called to the NWT bar in 1988 and has a background in child protection and family law.
“Child protection work is gritty. It’s hard and brutal,” MacPherson told Canadian Lawyer magazine last year.
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“I’m very keenly aware of the challenges around child protection and the huge, disproportionate number of Indigenous children in care across Canada … it is so important that if it’s done, [it] be done properly, with an understanding of that larger political and societal context.”
Her appointment was confirmed by David Lametti, Canada’s attorney general, on Monday.
She fills the vacancy created by Shannon Smallwood’s elevation to chief justice of the NWT Supreme Court last year.
The other serving NWT Supreme Court judges are Karan Shaner and Andrew Mahar.
