Nikki Smith: In Her Mother’s Footsteps
March 7, 2025
“One of the greatest assets of the structure of Corrections is that sense of positive role modeling. For offenders to see a young, educated woman working as a correctional officer, interacting with them respectfully, expecting to be respectfully treated in return, that was a path that was positive.”
Nikki Smith credits her mother, Rae Gateley, one of the first female correctional supervisors (now known as a correctional manager) in a male institution in Canada, as her role model and inspiration for becoming a correctional officer. After graduating from university and looking to start her career, Nikki’s mother was quick to encourage her to consider a career with Correctional Service Canada (CSC).
“Mom encouraged me to join CSC, noting that even if I started as a CX, there were myriad opportunities for me beyond being in uniform. But, at the time, she knew that I fit criteria for recruitment,” said Nikki.
Nikki and her mother, Rae, at Rae’s 85th birthday celebration earlier this year.
Although, her mother told her she wouldn’t need to be in corrections for her entire career, Nikki has been. Twenty of her 33 years were with CSC, and all her career has been in Public Safety, including the Parole Board of Canada.
She started as a correctional officer at Kingston Penitentiary in 1992, and soon realized that working in an operational-type field suited her.
“With my personality and my skill set and my interpersonal style, it was a great fit for me,” she said.
Over the course of her career, Nikki has worked in most of the institutions in the Kingston area at all levels of security, briefly spending a few years in Human Resources at RHQ (Ontario) and then spending 5 years in the community as the Parole Supervisor in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
She returned to the Kingston area, moving over to the Parole Board of Canada as the Regional Manager, Conditional Release Programs. She spent a couple of years in Ottawa on assignment with the Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat, and shortly after returning to Kingston she accepted an acting assignment as a Deputy Warden at Collins Bay Institution which turned into an appointment as the Deputy Warden at Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener, Ontario.
Nikki receiving her Correctional Officer Training Program certificate of completion from her mother at the former Staff College in Kingston, November 1992.
In 2021, she returned to Kingston, she says for the last time, as the Regional Director General for the Parole Board of Canada.
She may be back with the Parole Board of Canada now, but still has close ties with CSC. She is a director at large with the Friends of the Penitentiary Museum for Canada’s Penitentiary Museum.
“When I worked in institutions, how I interacted with offenders was really no different than how I interacted with my colleagues, how I interacted with managers, or how I interacted with the public,” said Nikki.
“Those respectful interactions between any level of staff and offenders has, I think, the most influential impact on offenders,” she said.
“When I worked at Grand Valley Institution and worked with women offenders, it was important for the women offenders to see a senior management team that was comprised of women, in addition to the many front-line staff who worked there to see women succeeding in positions of influence or authority.“
She recognizes her own successful path was guided by many women, including her mother. She noted that following her mother into a career as a correctional officer was unique.
“That idea of the son following the father into the family trade is absolutely something that you will see across the country, across the history of institutions. I think in the history of Kingston Penitentiary's 178 years of existence, the mother-daughter duo did not exist. I'm fairly certain we were the only ones.”
While Nikki and her mother may have been the only mother-daughter duo in the history of Kingston Penitentiary, today, that idea has changed.
“It may have never happened at Kingston Penitentiary, but there are examples across the country now of mothers and daughters working in the same institutional roles, and that idea excites me,” said Nikki.