Send this page to someone via email

TORONTO – A column by Margaret Atwood that poked fun at Stephen Harper’s hair disappeared for several hours from the National Post website Friday, raising the ire of the Twitterverse and prompting the award-winning author to wonder if she’d been censored.

Atwood’s piece was back on the newspaper’s main page late Friday after being taken down mid-afternoon. The Post said in an email it was held for fact checking.

The column poked fun at Harper, using as an entrypoint the Conservative attack ads that take aim at Justin Trudeau with the phrase, “Nice hair, Justin.”

READ MORE: Stephen Harper criticized in international newspapers

After it was removed from the website, Atwood tweeted the newspaper asking if she had been censored for what she called a “flighty little caper on hair,” drawing hundreds of retweets and responses.

Story continues below advertisement

The hashtag #hairgate began trending nationally on Twitter by evening as users questioned why the newspaper’s website would remove a humorous column related to the federal election campaigns, particularly one written by a prominent Canadian writer.