Welcome to the archives of the Civil Code Revision Office of Quebec (C.C.R.O.).
The archives are made up of the C.C.R.O.'s working papers, reports, correspondence, minutes of meetings, internal memoranda, etc., dating mostly between 1966 and 1979. The President of the C.C.R.O., Professor Paul-André Crépeau, donated his copies of the material to McGill University.
The official archives are housed in the Archives nationales du Québec in Quebec City. This set is not catalogued or digitized.
Under the direction of Paul-André Crépeau, the Civil Code Revision Office created over forty committees, each charged with reflecting on a particular portion of Quebec's private law with a view to its reform. Thus, separate committees made up of advocates, notaries, judges and law professors examined changes to be made to the law of property, of obligations, of successions, of insurance, etc.. Broad consultations were organized implicating jurists from outside Quebec as well as non-jurists working in fields affected by the law reform proposals such as bankers, social workers, labour union officials and the like. Each committee recorded its deliberations in a series of working documents organized within the archives according to a system of classification.
There are approximately 4000 documents in the archives, stored in over 300 volumes. The total collection of the papers of the C.C.R.O. in the possession of McGill University amounts to approximately 40,000 pages.
In 1995, an index to the archives was created by Professors John E.C. Brierley and Nicholas Kasirer. This index has been incorporated into this database, and is explained elsewhere in this site. In 2008, with significant support from the Wainwright Trust, a project of digitizing the archives was begun under the auspices of the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law. This led eventually to the creation of this website, with the assistance and support of the the Library Technology Services section of McGill University Library.
The archives of the C.C.R.O. will be a rich source for those interested in the working methods of the agency charged with a re-codification of private law in the civilian manner in North America and for those who are prepared to reach behind the more recent publications mentioned above with a view to tracing the evolution of thought in relation to specific matters governed by the new code.