Thank you for taking the time to answer. Your input is great as always.
While I made the changes suggested, unfortunately the problem remained.
Trying to troubleshoot the problem some more, I came across this thread here : Dnsmasq segfault that seemed to be applicable.
While I do not use DoH, I had this entry (among some random others that seemed innocuous) in my /etc/adblock/adblock.whitelist file to allow the cloudflare agent in one of my containers
_v2-origintunneld._tcp.argotunnel.com
Decided to empty the whitelist file just in case and dnsmasq stopped crashing while the pppoe daemon is trying to connect while the wan interface is down.
Seems strange that this entry causes dnsmasq to segfault when pppoe is down and does not seem to interfere at all when restarting dnsmasq or coming up from a reboot.
Thank you again for taking the time to help.
Regards,
Laz