The Court of Appeal of Quebec was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of the Honourable Louis LeBel during the night of June 7 to 8, 2023.

Justice LeBel was called to the Quebec Bar in 1962, after earning a law degree from Université Laval in 1961, and practised law in Quebec City for nearly two decades. He earned a graduate degree in private law from Université Laval in 1964 and completed a master’s degree at the University of Toronto in 1966. Justice LeBel was Bâtonnier of Quebec in 1983-1984 and taught at Université Laval and at the University of Ottawa.

On June 28, 1984, he was appointed to the Court of Appeal of Quebec, where he sat for nearly sixteen years before being elevated to the Supreme Court of Canada on January 7, 2000, retiring from that Court in 2014, after three decades of devoted work as an appellate judge. Colleagues who worked with him remember him as an approachable and compassionate man, a remarkable jurist with encyclopedic knowledge, and a family man.

After retiring from the bench in 2014, in addition to acting as counsel, the Honourable Louis LeBel continued to work for the benefit of the legal community, notably through his various publications and public speeches, as a member of the Comité de la rémunération des juges du Québec and as a faculty member at the Université Laval law faculty.

It therefore comes as no surprise that he was honoured with the highest of distinctions. Justice LeBel was awarded the Médaille du Barreau du Québec in 2000, a doctorate honoris causa from Université Laval in 2001, and the Médaille du Barreau de Québec in 2008. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2017.

Both his humanism and his contribution to Quebec and Canadian jurisprudence have left their mark on the law, society and generations of lawyers. His exceptional contribution to Quebec civil law, under the Civil Code of Lower Canada as well as during the initial decades of the Civil Code of Québec, is an indisputable one. An exceptional man and jurist has left us.

The Chief Justice of Québec, the judges of the Court of Appeal and its personnel wish to express their most sincere condolences to the family and friends of the Honourable Louis LeBel.