Dana Herlihey

Toronto was hit with a mild earth quake this afternoon. The Stitch Toronto office felt it at approximately 1:45, first with a slight tremor in the office, followed by walls and machinery shaking. Thinking the shaking was due to construction happening next door, Anna and I went to go check it out. Turns out, they had felt it too, leading us to conclude that we had just been in an earthquake.

I took to twitter and discovered other people around Toronto reporting shaking walls and buildings. #EarthquakeTO and #earthquake quickly started trending amongst my fellow tweeters, and a 15 second earthquake turned into a 15 minute twit-fest. As it turns out, there was a 5.5 earthquake along the Ontario – Quebec border that was felt all the way from Montreal to Waterloo. This city rarely ever feels earthquakes, so the novelty and cheeky humor of my fellow Torontonians made for some pretty hilarious reactions – the best ones taking a stab at the other most topical subject in Toronto – the G20.

Granted, the earthquake was pretty small and short lived (I didn’t even feel an aftershock). Californian’s are definitely – or should be – laughing at us and our mild pandemonium over a measly 5.5 earthquake (I mean, just look at how many times California shows up in the Earthquake Hazards Program list of most recent quakes).

Nonetheless, as my good friend Justin put it, I never thought I’d see the day I could check ‘be in earthquake’ off my bucket list – or at least didn’t think that day would come whilst living in Toronto.