A trembling earthquake measuring 5.0 on the moment magnitude scale earthquake struck the Ontario-Quebec border around 1:41 p.m. Wednesday, sending people scurrying out of office buildings.
The epicentre of the quake was Val-des-Bois, Quebec - about 70 km north of Ottawa, reported Sylvia Hayek, seismologist with Natural Resources Canada. The 30-second quake, she added, wasn't strong enough to cause any real damage.
"At 5.0 you wouldn't expect anything expect for maybe minor damage, but you're kind of on the threshold of causing damage. Now, the caveat to that is that soil conditions can accentuate the shaking sometimes or the structure itself, but in general you would just things falling off shelves," she said.
An initial assessment by City of Toronto officials reported no major damage to city infrastructure, but further investigations are planned. No injuries have been reported.
While the Ottawa region was hardest hit by reverberations, people all across Toronto reported feeling the floor shake and windows rattle, and quickly took to the Twitterverse to report their experiences - many finding humour in the situation.
CBC funnyman Rick Mercer reported he was in Toronto Danforth when he felt the tremors: "I blame Jack Layton," he wrote.
Another, now infamous tweet, reported an impending tsunami warning at the G20 fake lake.
Here in north Etobicoke, Leslie Duff, who works in an office building reported a minor shake: "It shook a little bit. It was more like rattling," she said shortly after the earthquake.
While many people in Toronto are still in shock over feeling their first earthquake, Hayek said this isn't the first time seismic activity has been felt in the region.
"In the west Quebec region, right from Timiskaming right along the Ottawa Valley - past Ottawa all the way to Montreal and into the States - there's this band of slightly enhanced seismicity where we have seen larger events in the past, the largest being in 1935," she said. "That was a magnitude 6.2 that did cause damage...and it was definitely felt in Toronto."
More recently, Hayek said Torontonians experienced some tremors radiating from a moderate Pennsylvania quake in September 1998. She said the Lake Ontario Region also produces some smaller activity occasionally, but that it's often not large enough to be felt.
"This is the perfect set up for us, because it reminds everybody that yes there are earthquakes in eastern Canada," Hayek said. "They don't happen very often, but we should still be prepared."
So far, Natural Resources Canada has reported at least 15 aftershocks large enough to trigger their autolocation system, she added: "There's probably been tons smaller ones as well that we'll see when we have time to sit down and look at the data...some won't have been felt at all, but the rest of them will probably just be felt in the region around the epicentre."
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported the quake ran 18 kilometres deep and was felt across much of southern Ontario.
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