The Ottawa Citizen, Monday April 1, 1996, by Charles Gordon
Here is something you are going to see more often in the years ahead: The Spanish ambassador to Canada says some stuff on his home page and it gets him in trouble.
There is a turbot war going on, see, as there so often is, and the Spanish ambassador gets on the Internet, as so many of us will soon be doing, and muses about some of the shortcomings he has observed in some Canadians, such as the then Minister of Fisheries, Brian Tobin. The Spanish ambassador goes on to make a few other little jests at the expense of Canadian bureaucrats and the government in general.
We all do that, and nobody bothers us. But then, we are not the Spanish ambassador. In this case somebody notices what the Spanish ambassador is saying on his home page and brings it to the Canadian government's attention. Since there are no urgent problems in Canada at the moment, the Canadian government welcomes the opportunity to spring into action.
No one knows for certain how many Spanish Ambassador to Canada home pages there are. The Internet begin what it is, there may be many. Try looking up someone with an ordinary kind of name, like Elvis Presley, say, and see how many home pages turn up. People have home pages who have been dead for centuries.
For whatever reason, the Canadian government figures it has located the right one, reads it, reacts adversely, raises the matter with Madrid, as diplomats say, and is assured, as diplomats say, and is assured, as diplomats say, "that appropriate measures would be taken to ensure that there are no inaccuracies in what statements are put on the Internet about Canada."
This probably represents a diplomatic victory for our country and must be hailed as such. Still, it's sad. Where can an ambassador - or anyone, for that matter - go to express himself without some busybody looking over his shoulder ready to run complaining to the government of Canada?
For a while, the concept of the home page looked like the perfect medium for personal expression. You set up shop in the Internet, put your picture in there, a brief autobiography, some nice quotations about yourself that you make up if your friends are too busy to make them. It's the Your Name Home Page -- the on-line version of your Warholian 15 minutes of fame.
While you have people's attention, you let them click on a number of important pronouncements you would like to make about
various important issues. To show off a bit, you provide electronic visitors with links to the Marcel Proust, Beethoven and Aristotle web sites. Glory by association. Then, just to show you have a wide variety of interests, you also provide a link to Uma Thurman.
On your home page, yhou're free to speak your mind. A man's home page is his castle.
Well, time to look for another castle. And not just you. Don't you want to bet that Brian Tobin himself has a home page. On that page would be a table of contents, including such categories as Victory over Spain, Victory over Tories, Newfoundland Renaissance and Miscellaneous Triumphs. There would be links to Winston Churchill, Wines Not From the Iberian Peninsula and Other Great Heroes of the Western World.
Now Tobin will have to be careful what he says on it.
You know that your neighbor has a home page and Bill Clinton has one and the Polkaroo and maybe some of the other ambassadors to Canada as well.
What are they all saying? What will they have to apologize for? Are some of them comparing our Canadian climate unfavourably with those of other nations? Are some of them claiming that one of our provinces has been on strike? Is there an ambassador telling his Internet visitor that nobody in Canada eats turbot anyway?
Can these things be s aid without risking repercussions? Can people even make April Fools jokes on the Internet? It is all new territory, wainting for rules to be made.
In the meantime let us note that all these wheels were set in motion by somebody who felt it incumbent upon himself to spend time sitting in front of his computer readiang the Internet home page of the Spanish ambassador to Canada. Perhaps the solitaire game was down.