A Los Angeles man who sneaked into Canada to see his Internet girlfriend will be deported — minus all his fingers and some of his toes, it was reported Tuesday.
Charles Gonsoulin, 41, will have the fingers and toes amputated because of severe frostbite suffered during a 100-hour trek from Pembina, N.D., across the border to Emerson, Manitoba, where he was found wandering on a golf course on Feb. 23, suffering from hypothermia, the Winnipeg Sun newspaper reported.
“It is better to have loved and to have lost than never to have loved at all,” the Sun quoted Gonsoulin as saying. “It was all worth it for me. It’s the difference between sitting around dreaming about things and going out and getting them.”
Gonsoulin and the Canadian woman met in an Internet chat room in 2002. The woman lives in Quebec, about 1,600 miles east of the spot where Gonsoulin was found, Gonsoulin’s lawyer, Mike Cook, told a court hearing.
Gonsoulin could not enter Canada legally because he was convicted of robbing a Pizza Hut in Arkansas in 1984, the newspaper said.
Nor could his girlfriend afford to travel to Los Angeles, so he took a bus to North Dakota where he crossed the border, he told the newspaper.
“Mr. Gonsoulin didn’t really know that there was any place on Earth that could be so cold and so inhospitable,” Cook told a court hearing Monday, adding his client had never experienced temperatures colder than 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
He encountered temperatures as low as 15 degrees below zero during his long hike.
Gonsoulin is receiving medical treatment in a Winnipeg jail. He still has not met his girlfriend face-to-face, but they have spoken on the phone and Gonsoulin said they are still in love.
No deportation date has yet been set.
