A photo commissioned by the City of Ottawa has made a local firefighter the star of a fictional internet obituary — much to his surprise.

Capt. Rudy Lindia said he thought the photo would be used for recruitment or advertising by the City of Ottawa.
(CBC)

Hero Firefighter Loses Lifelong Battle With Fire is the headline above an image of Capt. Rudy Lindia that appears in the Sept. 12, 2006, edition of the Onion, a website that pokes fun at the news.

"My 82-year-old mother wasn't very, very impressed when she saw it — that her son, who's alive and well in her living room, is on some website, dead," said Lindia, whose colleagues now sometimes jokingly refer to him as "dead man talking, dead man walking."

The photo accompanied a satirical article with a Des Moines, Iowa, dateline, describing the death of "Lieut. Anthony Castillo" who "finally succumbed to the combustion he had so bravely battled during most of his adult life."

Lindia said he agreed to have the photo taken in 2000, believing that it would be used in recruiting or advertisements for the city.

The photo, for which Lindia was not paid, was taken by an outside company hired by the city. It was eventually posted on a website where organizations could pay to use it as they pleased.

Lindia said he signed a waiver at the time, but believed it was a release for the city to use his image.

Later, the image cropped up in some firefighter trade magazines, which doesn't bother Lindia.

However, he said he was not pleased when a friend called him and told him about the article on the Onion.

Lindia said when he called the Onion to complain, the CEO found the situation hilarious and pointed out that he had bought rights to the photo on a website.

Lindia thinks Onion should apologize

Lindia said he's not as angry about the situation as he once was, but he thinks the Onion should have let him know it was going to use the photo in that way and ought to apologize to him.

The city also holds some responsibility for allowing the situation to occur, said privacy expert Philippa Lawson.

"We're talking about a situation where the employee is in a much less powerful position and is more inclined to just sign something because the employer is asking them to," said Lawson, executive director of the Canadian internet policy and public interest clinic at the University of Ottawa.

She said the city should have done more to protect its employee.