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“Anyone who says that they would not eat their dog is by extension saying that they value their dog’s life over their own. I find that offensive,” he wrote in an email to the National Post.

Paul Cobham, director of operations at Nova Scotia’s Survival School Canada, posited that Mr. Lavoie’s action was an “absolute last-resort” decision made in a haze of starvation and desperation.

“It’s almost one stage away from becoming a cannibal,” he said. “But nothing’s off the table when it comes to surviving.“

On Oct. 30, Mr. Lavoie was on the brink of death when he was pulled from the Northern Quebec wilderness by rescuers with the Sûreté du Québec.

He entered the Quebec Boreal Forest in June in a canoe trip up the Nottaway River with his dog, but became stranded in August when a bear attacked his campsite, destroying his food and much of his survival gear.

When he was reached by helicopter — his family finally contacted police in late October — Mr. Lavoie was barely able to speak, was suffering from hypothermia and had lost half his body weight.

Only after the badly injured man was safely in hospital did it emerge that in September, wounded from a fall, out of food and ammunition — and with freezing weather closing in — Mr. Lavoie had sacrificed his dog with a rock to the head.

“He is very ill and he can barely talk, but when our officers spoke to him in hospital the only thing he said was, ‘I want to get a new dog,’” the Sûreté’s Richard Carbonneu told a Mail reporter.