Oblivious? Not really, just kind of taken up with other things; distracted, busy. Both of us were dimly aware of some kind of commotion outside the house. We'd got up late yesterday morning, and Friday just happens to be a busy day for us. Nothing unusual, just lots of things that we usually do, scheduled for Friday.

I was setting the table for breakfast and preparing breakfast, and my husband had taken our little Riley out to the backyard. It was a glorious morning, quite beautiful. Milder than the previous days of the week and sunny, promising to be a lovely day, and we were ready for it. Most people were. And many people in the area were aware of something happening, when we were not. Our granddaughter, at school in one of her Grade 11 classes was aware.

As for us, busy in the kitchen and just come in from the out-of-doors, there was a rumble we were suddenly aware of that put us in mind of something quite large having driven close by, even up our driveway. A late school bus? A tractor-trailer on the wrong street, looking for an address scheduled for a move? None of those, evidently, and we hadn't bothered to go over to the front door to look out.

A magnitude 5.2 quake that took place northeast of Shawville, Quebec. And then an aftershock. And we hadn't noticed. We've noticed tremors over the years that occurred while we were still abed, or busy in the house. There was one in 2010 that shocked us with the force of its intensity, sounding as though a jet airliner was headed right for the house, and the house walls and floors shook even more than the tremors we had been familiar with through our once-residence in Tokyo.

That event was unmistakable, the one that occurred in 2010 that really spoke to our awareness. A seismologist with Natural Resources Canada explained in a newspaper article this morning that the two events, yesterday morning's and the 2010 incident were quite different in character. No injuries or structural damage reported for yesterday's tremors, a small one following the initial, larger one.

Quite unlike that which occurred two years ago and which occasioned much alarm, fear and some property damage, although no harm came to anyone, for which we can all be grateful. Comes with the territory; we live in an earthquake-prone zone.

And where we in particular live there is plenty of leda clay which makes for a quite unstable geological formation. When quakes occur the clay turns into a kind of slurry causing structures to be far more affected than would occur otherwise, on more stable ground.