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Few in these parts were better acquainted with Anthony Bourdain than Montreal chef David McMillan. Bourdain, the maverick celebrity chef and travel documentarian who committed suicide last week, championed the work and philosophy of McMillan as well as his Joe Beef/Liverpool House/Vin Papillon/Mon Lapin copartner Frédéric Morin.

McMillan and Morin were with him in Newfoundland last fall for an episode of Bourdains’s hit CNN series Parts Unknown — which aired in May. But even back then, McMillan could sense that not all was well in Bourdain’s world, and he wasn’t entirely stunned to learn of his suicide.

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“He was a dark dude,” McMillan says. “He made light of that stuff. He would say that he wouldn’t suffer through oncology or palliative care if he had lung cancer … that he would take matters into his own hands. He had this cavalier attitude towards that.”

Bourdain wasn’t physically ill as far as McMillan knew. But he concedes that old drug habits and current drinking habits had to have taken their toll.