Guibord Case

Brown v. Les Curé et Marguilliers de l'Œuvre et de la Fabrique de la Paroisse de Montréal, better known as the Guibord case, was a famous decision in 1874 by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in an early Canadian legal dispute over the relationship between church and state.

The question was whether the church officials of the Parish of Montréal could refuse to bury a deceased member of the Church because of his political beliefs. Joseph Guibord had been a member of the Institut Canadien de Montréal, an association dedicated to the principles of liberalism. The Institut was at odds with the Roman Catholic church, at that time very powerful in Quebec and very conservative. When he died, the church officials of the Parish of Montréal refused to allow his widow, Henriette Brown, to have his remains buried in the section of the Côte des Neiges Cemetery reserved for Roman Catholics.

Brown brought a petition in the Quebec courts to require the church officials to allow her to bury her husband in the cemetery. The case was ultimately decided by the Judicial Committee, at that time the court of last resort for Canada within the British Empire. The Judicial Committee ruled that the church officials had to allow Guibord's remains to be buried in the Roman Catholic section of the cemetery, although without full religious rites. The case caused great political and religious controversy in Quebec.