Earthquake shakes central Canada

I was sitting in my desk at work and for the first time in my life I felt my chair and desk shaking very noticeably! It lasted for 15 seconds ... everyone was wondering is that a real earthquake??

Here is the media coverage from the local news site:  

Amagnitude 5.0 earthquake hit central Canada this afternoon, rattling buildings from Windsor to Montreal and several U.S. states.

The epicentre of the quake was likely in Quebec, north of Ottawa, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and struck at 1:41 p.m. EDT at a depth of 18 kilometres. The area - known as the Charlevoix-Kamouraska zone along the St. Lawrence River - is the most active seismic zone in that part of Canada, according to a report for the Canadian Geological Survey published earlier this year.
The same report predicted that the odds of a "structurally damaging" quake for Ottawa were about 9 per cent over the next 50 years. For Vancouver, the largest city near Canada's other most active seismic zone, those odds were estimated at 11 per cent.
An earthquake with a magniture of 5.0 is considered to be a moderate one but it can cause major damage to poorly constructed buildings over small regions. At the most, it should cause only slight damage to well-designed buildings.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice was doing an interview with CTV at its Ottawa bureau on the 14th floor of the World Exchange Plaza in downtown Ottawa when the tremor struck.
"I was on the air and suddenly my chair was moving," he said afterwards. "Fortunately I was at the end."
The sidewalks quickly filled with workers who decided to evacuate their buildings. Within minutes of the tremor, cellphone service in Ottawa was down, possibly because callers had overloaded the system, though the exact cause was not known.

The Globe's Ottawa bureau was evacuated at 1:43 p.m. The Toronto newsroom also shook.  Read more