Montreal man sues funeral home, claiming mother was cremated against her will

A Montreal man is suing a funeral home because he claims they cremated his late mother without his permission.

A Montreal man is suing a funeral home because he claims they cremated his late mother without his permission.

After Stephane Thalès’ 78-year-old mother died of cancer, he consulted her will. She had named him executor and made it clear she wanted to be buried.

Without his consent, however, she ended up cremated, he says.

“I took care of my mother the last 15 months of her life, saw her going down. She trusted me to handle her things,” he said, his voice shaking with emotion. “It’s the worst catastrophic potential event.”

Edith Jean-Philippe died in November 2015, and Thalès got in touch with the Maison Darche funeral home in Longueil.

He says he told them he wanted to bury her the following May, around her birthday and Mother’s Day.

“It was winter, and I didn’t want to bury her in the snow. She comes from a hot country; she wouldn’t have liked that,” he said.

In the following months, he ran into some financial and administrative troubles.