This is awkward: NextMEDIA keynote speaker Michael Wolff on Monday got hauled into the penalty box by Canadian customs agents at Pearson International Airport in Toronto.

Wolff had just deplaned in Toronto and was talking to a customs agent when he discovered he had few details in his mind, or his briefcase, to confirm the purpose of his visit.

“Why are you here?,” Wolff recalled being asked.

“I said business. What’s your business? I’m speaking at a conference. Where? I have no idea,” he added of the ill-fated conversation.

Asked who he was speaking to in Toronto, Wolff said the details were in his mobile phone.

“But [the phone] doesn’t work in customs,” he recounted of the Internet reception drop for airport security reasons.

The irony of an American media expert in Toronto to discuss the impact of new technologies on the Canadian industry finding himself without digital access to the Internet or his mobile phone was not lost on Wolff.

Do you have a business card, he was next asked.

“No, I don’t have that either,” Wolff recalled answering before being detained for additional questioning.

He next had to fill out a lengthy document to secure a required work permit.

Exasperated, Wolff finally got up from the desk and told the agents he had decided to return at once to New York City.

But then Wolff had a light-bulb moment.

“Why not just Google me?” he recounted to the NextMEDIA audience when he finally bounded onto the Toronto stage for his keynote address, a half-hour behind schedule.

The agents did Google the media pundit, found Wolff on Wikipedia, and bid him a fruitful stay in Canada.