Vancouver Island is Separating From Canada ...

... Literally, as it turns out:

Vancouver Island is in the middle of one of its periodic slides towards Japan -- an event that experts say will eventually trigger a catastrophic earthquake.

"Episodic tremor and slip" (ETS) is the event's formal name.

Every 14 months or so, Vancouver Island moves about five millimetres closer to Japan -- a temporary reverse of its extremely slow movement towards continental Canada.

Well, since the provincial government headquarters is in Victoria, which is one the island, 5 mm sounds like a pretty good speed. After all, the island has a bureaucracy to overcome.

If the event happened over the course of 10 seconds, it would trigger an 6.5 to 6.7-magnitude earthquake, but it happens over two weeks. As a result, it goes unnoticed by people.

Sounds an awful lot like Jacques Parizeau's Quebec separation strategy, doesn't it? If he'd used this analogy instead of referring to boiling lobsters, he wouldn't've gotten his campaign in so much hot water.

Vancouver Island: proof positive that Western separatism is (literally) real.