Canadian postal code
Encyclopedia
A Canadian postal code is a six-character string
that forms part of a postal
address
in Canada
. Like British
and Dutch postcodes, Canada's postal code
s are alphanumeric
. They are in the format A0A 0A0, where A is a letter and 0 is a digit, with a space separating the third and fourth characters. According to Statistics Canada
, about 850,000 postal codes exist in Canada, using Forward Sortation Areas from A0A in Newfoundland
to Y1A in Yukon
.
Canada Post provides a free postal code look-up tool on its website,, via its app
for such smartphones as the iPhone
and BlackBerry
, and sells hard-copy directories and CD-ROM
s. Many vendors also sell validation tools, which allow customers to properly match addresses and postal codes. Hard-copy directories can also be consulted in all post offices, and some libraries.
As of 1943, the City of Toronto was divided into 14 zones, numbered from 1 to 15, except that 7 and 11 were unused, and there was a 2B zone.
In the late 1960s, the Post Office began implementing a 3-digit zone number scheme in major cities to replace existing 1- and 2-digit zone numbers. For example, zones numbered from 100 to 799 were assigned throughout Metropolitan Toronto, with a goal of sorting mail addresses into smaller districts. Toronto's renumbering took effect 1 May 1969, accompanied by an advertising campaign under the slogan "Your number is up". The system was introduced during 1968 in Calgary
, Edmonton
, Hamilton
, Montreal
, and Windsor
. Besides Toronto, the system was to have expanded in 1969 to London
, Ottawa
, Quebec City
, and Vancouver
.
With impending plans for a national postal code system, Postmaster General Eric Kierans
announced that the Post Office would begin cancelling the new 3-digit city zone system. Companies changed their mail addressing at their own expense only to find the new zoning would prove to be short-lived.
announced that a six-character postal code would be introduced, beginning with a test in the City of Ottawa
on 1 April 1971 led by John E.J. Carisse, Canada's first Postal Code Officer. Coding of Ottawa was followed by a provincial-level rollout of the system in Manitoba
, and the system was gradually implemented in the rest of the country from 1972 to 1974. The rollout was marked by a large advertising campaign, costing some C$
545,000.
The introduction of such a code system allowed Canada Post to easily speed up, as well as simplify, the flow of mail in the country. However, when the automated sorting system was initially conceived, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers
and other relevant unions objected to it, mainly because the wages of those who ran the new automated machines were much lower than those who had hand-sorted mail. The unions ended up staging job action and public information campaigns, with the message that they did not want people and business to use postal codes on their mail. 20 March 1974 was declared "boycott the postal code day" and the union promised that letters without postal codes would be given preferential service. Eventually the unions started being compensated once the automated system was put into use and eventually generating significant revenue for Canada Post. The boycott was called off in February 1976.
One 1975 Toronto ad generated controversy by showing a man writing a postal code on the bottom of a thonged
woman with the ditty We're not 'stringing' you along/Use postal codes—you'll 'thing our 'thong'/Don't be cheeky—you've all got 'em/Please include them on the bottom. The ad ran only once before being accused of sexism by NDP
MP John Rodriguez
. Postmaster General
Bryce Mackasey
later apologized for it.
and Ontario
, corresponds to an entire province or territory. Owing to Quebec's and Ontario's large populations, those two provinces have three and five postal districts respectively, and each has at least one urban area so populous that it has a dedicated postal district ("H" for Laval
and Montréal
, and "M" for Toronto
). On the other hand, the populations in Nunavut
and the Northwest Territories
(NWT) are small enough that, even after Nunavut separated from NWT and became its own territory in 1999, they continue to share a postal district. The digit specifies if the FSA is urban or rural. A zero indicates a wide-area rural region, while all other digits indicate urban areas. The second letter represents a specific rural region, entire medium-sized city, or a section of a major metropolitan area.
A directory of FSAs is provided, divided into separate articles by postal district. Individual FSA lists are in a tabular format, with the numbers (known as zones) going across the table and the second letter going down the table. The FSA lists specify all communities covered by each rural FSA. Medium-sized cities may have one dedicated FSA, while larger cities have more than one FSA within their limits. For FSAs spanning more than one city, the city which is allocated the most codes in each such FSA is listed. For cities with a small number of FSAs (but more than one), the lists specify the relative location of each FSA in those cities. For cities with a large number of FSAs, applicable neighbourhoods and boroughs are specified.
s and small franchised retail postal outlets all the way up to sortation plants. In urban areas, LDUs may be specific postal carriers' routes. In rural areas where direct door-to-door delivery is not available, an LDU can describe a set of post office boxes or a rural route. LDU 9Z9 is used exclusively for Business Reply Mail
. In rural FSAs, the first two characters are usually assigned in alphanumerical order by the name of each community.
LDU 9Z0 refers to large regional distribution centre facilities, and is also used as a placeholder, appearing in some regional postmarks such as the "K0H 9Z0" on purely-local mail within the Kingston, Ontario
area.
equipment used in automated sorting could easily confuse them with other letters and digits, especially when they are rendered as cursive handwriting. The letters W and Z are used, but are not currently used as the first letter. This scheme allows for a maximum 3,600 FSAs: with 2,000 possible LDUs in each FSA, there is a theoretical maximum of 7.2 million codes. The practical maximum is a bit lower, as Canada Post reserves some FSAs for special functions, such as for test or promotional purposes, as well as for sorting mail bound for destinations outside Canada. The current Statistics Canada estimate of over 850,000 active postal codes represents about 12% of the entire postal code "space", leaving more than ample room for expansion.
(MLOCR) system looks at its destination address, translates its postal code into a barcode
, and prints that barcode on the faced envelope. For regular-size mail, a UV
-fluorescent barcode
is applied to the lower-right corner of the envelope; for larger envelopes, a special four-state barcode known as PostBar
is applied, which encodes additional relevant information along with the postal code. The four-state barcode is put on a sticker, which is then applied to the envelope either on its lower-right corner, or just above the destination address. The complexity of the symbologies used does not make manual pre-printing of the barcodes practical, especially since the special ink used in the fluorescent barcode is not normally available to the public. However, businesses that want to reduce costs by pre-printing their own barcodes can enter into a licensing agreement with Canada Post, which includes either existing computer software for printing barcodes or the symbology specifications for businesses that wish to develop their own software. Pieces of mail that are hand-sorted instead of machine-sorted are not barcoded. This is sometimes the case when sender and recipient are in rural areas and geographically close. The majority of handsorted mail is either inflexible or too large to fit in the MLOCR.
, Fossambault-sur-le-Lac
and Lac-Saint-Joseph, Quebec
) was urbanized to postal codes beginning with G3N to remove ambiguities and confusions caused by similar street names.
Uniquely among province-wide districts, New Brunswick (postal district E) is completely urbanized, its rural codes having been phased out.
office were noticing a considerable number of letters addressed to Santa Claus
coming into the postal system, and those letters were being treated as undeliverable. Since those employees did not want the writers, mostly young children, to be disappointed at the lack of response, they started answering the letters themselves. The amount of mail sent to Santa Claus increased every Christmas
, up to the point that Canada Post decided to start an official Santa Claus letter-response program in 1983. Approximately one million letters come in to Santa Claus each Christmas, including from outside of Canada, and all of them are answered, in the same languages in which they are written. Canada Post introduced a special address for mail to Santa Claus, complete with its own postal code:
In French, Santa's name Père Noël
translates as "Father Christmas", addressed as:
H0H 0H0 was chosen for this special seasonal use as it reads as "Ho ho ho
".
The H0- prefix is a contradiction: the 0 indicates a very small, rural village, but H is used to designate Montreal
, the second-largest city in Canada. As such, the H0- prefix is almost completely empty, with one exception: H0M, assigned to the international Akwesasne
tribal reserve on the U.S.-Canada border, is the only other H0- postal code in active use.
, the postal codes of the three corresponding military post offices on Canadian soil are used. These being the Fleet Mail Offices (FMO) in Victoria, BC, V9A 7N2 and Halifax, NS, B3K 5X5 and the Canadian Forces Post Office (CFPO) in Belleville, ON, K8N 5W6, dependant upon the final destination. These postal codes each represent a number of military post offices abroad which are specified not by postal code, but by CFPO or FMO number. The LDUs in this case corresponding not so much to a physical as to a virtual delivery unit, since mail is not delivered locally, but instead forwarded to the actual delivery units at Canadian military bases and ships abroad.
In this example, Canada Post will deliver to the CFPO at Belleville and the Canadian Forces Postal System will continue transport to the addressee at CFPO 5053 (in Geilenkirchen, Germany) by whatever means and timing the military will deem appropriate.
is Canada's poorest postal code").
As Canadian electoral districts
frequently follow postal code areas, citizens can identify their local elected representative using their postal code. Provincial and federal government websites offer an online "look-up" feature based on postal codes. Although A1A 1A1 is sometimes displayed as a generic code for this purpose, it is actually a genuine postal code in use in the Lower Battery, St. John's Harbour
, Newfoundland. Another common "example" code in Canada Post materials, K1A 0B1, is the valid code for Place de la Poste, the Canada Post Place office building in Ottawa
.
String (computer science)
In formal languages, which are used in mathematical logic and theoretical computer science, a string is a finite sequence of symbols that are chosen from a set or alphabet....
that forms part of a postal
Mail
Mail, or post, is a system for transporting letters and other tangible objects: written documents, typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages are delivered to destinations around the world. Anything sent through the postal system is called mail or post.In principle, a postal service...
address
Address (geography)
An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used for describing the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along with other identifiers such as house or...
in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Like British
UK postcodes
The postal codes used in the United Kingdom are known as postcodes. They are alphanumeric and were introduced by the Royal Mail over a 15-year period from 11th October 1959 to 1974...
and Dutch postcodes, Canada's postal code
Postal code
A postal code is a series of letters and/or digits appended to a postal address for the purpose of sorting mail. Once postal codes were introduced, other applications became possible.In February 2005, 117 of the 190 member countries of the Universal Postal Union had postal code systems...
s are alphanumeric
Alphanumeric
Alphanumeric is a combination of alphabetic and numeric characters, and is used to describe the collection of Latin letters and Arabic digits or a text constructed from this collection. There are either 36 or 62 alphanumeric characters. The alphanumeric character set consists of the numbers 0 to...
. They are in the format A0A 0A0, where A is a letter and 0 is a digit, with a space separating the third and fourth characters. According to Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada is the Canadian federal government agency commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. Its headquarters is in Ottawa....
, about 850,000 postal codes exist in Canada, using Forward Sortation Areas from A0A in Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
to Y1A in Yukon
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
.
Canada Post provides a free postal code look-up tool on its website,, via its app
APP (file format)
APP is an abbreviation for application. The filename extension .app means application in Symbian OS, SkyOS, GNUstep and Mac OS X.On the latter two systems, a .app file is actually a folder containing binaries and supporting files....
for such smartphones as the iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
and BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
, and sells hard-copy directories and CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
s. Many vendors also sell validation tools, which allow customers to properly match addresses and postal codes. Hard-copy directories can also be consulted in all post offices, and some libraries.
City postal zones
Numbered postal zones were first used in Toronto in 1925 and arrived in other Canadian cities by the 1940s. Mail to a Toronto address in zone 5 would be addressed in this format:- Firstname Lastname
- 9999 Streetname Avenue
- Toronto 5, Ontario
As of 1943, the City of Toronto was divided into 14 zones, numbered from 1 to 15, except that 7 and 11 were unused, and there was a 2B zone.
In the late 1960s, the Post Office began implementing a 3-digit zone number scheme in major cities to replace existing 1- and 2-digit zone numbers. For example, zones numbered from 100 to 799 were assigned throughout Metropolitan Toronto, with a goal of sorting mail addresses into smaller districts. Toronto's renumbering took effect 1 May 1969, accompanied by an advertising campaign under the slogan "Your number is up". The system was introduced during 1968 in Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
, Edmonton
Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...
, Hamilton
Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...
, Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, and Windsor
Windsor, Ontario
Windsor is the southernmost city in Canada and is located in Southwestern Ontario at the western end of the heavily populated Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. It is within Essex County, Ontario, although administratively separated from the county government. Separated by the Detroit River, Windsor...
. Besides Toronto, the system was to have expanded in 1969 to London
London, Ontario
London is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, situated along the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. The city has a population of 352,395, and the metropolitan area has a population of 457,720, according to the 2006 Canadian census; the metro population in 2009 was estimated at 489,274. The city...
, Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
, Quebec City
Quebec City
Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest...
, and Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
.
With impending plans for a national postal code system, Postmaster General Eric Kierans
Eric Kierans
Eric William Kierans, PC, OC was a Canadian economist and politician.-Life and career:Born in Montreal on Feb. 2, 1914, Kierans grew up in the working-class Saint-Henri neighbourhood; his father worked at Canadian Car and Foundry and his mother came to Canada as a domestic...
announced that the Post Office would begin cancelling the new 3-digit city zone system. Companies changed their mail addressing at their own expense only to find the new zoning would prove to be short-lived.
Planning
As the largest Canadian cities were growing in the 1950s and 1960s, the volumes of mail passing through the country's postal system also grew, reaching billions by the 1950s, and tens of billions by the mid 1960s. Consequently, it was becoming progressively more difficult for employees who hand-sorted mail to memorize and keep track of all the individual letter-carrier routes within each city. New technology that allowed mail to be delivered at a faster speed also contributed to the pressure for these employees to properly sort the mail. Canada was one of the last Western countries to get a nationwide postal code system. A report tabled in the House of Commons in 1969 dealt with the expected impact of "environmental change" on the Post Office operations over the following 25 years. A key recommendation was the "establishment of a task force to determine the nature of the automation and mechanization the Post Office should adopt, which might include design of a postal code".Implementation
In February 1970, Communications Minister Eric KieransEric Kierans
Eric William Kierans, PC, OC was a Canadian economist and politician.-Life and career:Born in Montreal on Feb. 2, 1914, Kierans grew up in the working-class Saint-Henri neighbourhood; his father worked at Canadian Car and Foundry and his mother came to Canada as a domestic...
announced that a six-character postal code would be introduced, beginning with a test in the City of Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
on 1 April 1971 led by John E.J. Carisse, Canada's first Postal Code Officer. Coding of Ottawa was followed by a provincial-level rollout of the system in Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
, and the system was gradually implemented in the rest of the country from 1972 to 1974. The rollout was marked by a large advertising campaign, costing some C$
Canadian dollar
The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
545,000.
The introduction of such a code system allowed Canada Post to easily speed up, as well as simplify, the flow of mail in the country. However, when the automated sorting system was initially conceived, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers or CUPW is a public sector trade union representing postal workers employed at Canada Post as well as private sector workers outside Canada Post.-Activities:...
and other relevant unions objected to it, mainly because the wages of those who ran the new automated machines were much lower than those who had hand-sorted mail. The unions ended up staging job action and public information campaigns, with the message that they did not want people and business to use postal codes on their mail. 20 March 1974 was declared "boycott the postal code day" and the union promised that letters without postal codes would be given preferential service. Eventually the unions started being compensated once the automated system was put into use and eventually generating significant revenue for Canada Post. The boycott was called off in February 1976.
One 1975 Toronto ad generated controversy by showing a man writing a postal code on the bottom of a thonged
G-string
A G-string is a type of thong underwear or swimsuit, a narrow piece of cloth, leather, or plastic, that covers or holds the genitals, passes between the buttocks, and is attached to a band around the hips, worn as swimwear or underwear by women and men...
woman with the ditty We're not 'stringing' you along/Use postal codes—you'll 'thing our 'thong'/Don't be cheeky—you've all got 'em/Please include them on the bottom. The ad ran only once before being accused of sexism by NDP
New Democratic Party
The New Democratic Party , commonly referred to as the NDP, is a federal social-democratic political party in Canada. The interim leader of the NDP is Nycole Turmel who was appointed to the position due to the illness of Jack Layton, who died on August 22, 2011. The provincial wings of the NDP in...
MP John Rodriguez
John Rodriguez
John R. Rodriguez is a Canadian politician. He served as the mayor of Greater Sudbury, Ontario from 2006 to 2010, and previously represented the electoral district of Nickel Belt in the Canadian House of Commons from 1972 to 1980 and from 1984 to 1993 as a member of the New Democratic...
. Postmaster General
Postmaster General of Canada
The Postmaster General of Canada was the Canadian cabinet minister responsible for the Post Office Department . In 1851, management of the post office was transferred from Britain to the provincial governments of the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward...
Bryce Mackasey
Bryce Mackasey
Bryce Stuart Mackasey, PC was a Canadian Member of Parliament, Cabinet minister, and Ambassador to Portugal....
later apologized for it.
Forward sortation areas
A forward sortation area (FSA) is a geographical region in which all postal codes start with the same three characters. The first letter of an FSA code denotes a particular "postal district", which, outside of QuebecQuebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
and Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, corresponds to an entire province or territory. Owing to Quebec's and Ontario's large populations, those two provinces have three and five postal districts respectively, and each has at least one urban area so populous that it has a dedicated postal district ("H" for Laval
Laval, Quebec
Laval is a Canadian city and a region in southwestern Quebec. It is the largest suburb of Montreal, the third largest municipality in the province of Quebec, and the 14th largest city in Canada with a population of 368,709 in 2006...
and Montréal
Montréal (region)
Montréal is one of the administrative regions of Quebec, Canada.It is also a territory equivalent to a regional county municipality and a census division , for both of which its geographical code is 66....
, and "M" for Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
). On the other hand, the populations in Nunavut
Nunavut
Nunavut is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993...
and the Northwest Territories
Northwest Territories
The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...
(NWT) are small enough that, even after Nunavut separated from NWT and became its own territory in 1999, they continue to share a postal district. The digit specifies if the FSA is urban or rural. A zero indicates a wide-area rural region, while all other digits indicate urban areas. The second letter represents a specific rural region, entire medium-sized city, or a section of a major metropolitan area.
A directory of FSAs is provided, divided into separate articles by postal district. Individual FSA lists are in a tabular format, with the numbers (known as zones) going across the table and the second letter going down the table. The FSA lists specify all communities covered by each rural FSA. Medium-sized cities may have one dedicated FSA, while larger cities have more than one FSA within their limits. For FSAs spanning more than one city, the city which is allocated the most codes in each such FSA is listed. For cities with a small number of FSAs (but more than one), the lists specify the relative location of each FSA in those cities. For cities with a large number of FSAs, applicable neighbourhoods and boroughs are specified.
Local delivery units
The last three characters denote a local delivery unit (LDU). An LDU denotes a specific single address or range of addresses, which can correspond to an entire small town, a significant part of a medium-sized town, a single side of a city block in larger cities, a single large building or a portion of a very large one, a single (large) institution such as a university or a hospital, or a business that receives large volumes of mail on a regular basis. LDUs ending in zero correspond to postal facilities, from post officePost office
A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...
s and small franchised retail postal outlets all the way up to sortation plants. In urban areas, LDUs may be specific postal carriers' routes. In rural areas where direct door-to-door delivery is not available, an LDU can describe a set of post office boxes or a rural route. LDU 9Z9 is used exclusively for Business Reply Mail
Freepost
Freepost is a postal service provided by various postal administrations, whereby a person sends mail without affixing postage, and the recipient pays the postage when collecting the mail...
. In rural FSAs, the first two characters are usually assigned in alphanumerical order by the name of each community.
LDU 9Z0 refers to large regional distribution centre facilities, and is also used as a placeholder, appearing in some regional postmarks such as the "K0H 9Z0" on purely-local mail within the Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...
area.
Number of possible postal codes
No postal code includes the letters D, F, I, O, Q, or U, as the OCROptical character recognition
Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
equipment used in automated sorting could easily confuse them with other letters and digits, especially when they are rendered as cursive handwriting. The letters W and Z are used, but are not currently used as the first letter. This scheme allows for a maximum 3,600 FSAs: with 2,000 possible LDUs in each FSA, there is a theoretical maximum of 7.2 million codes. The practical maximum is a bit lower, as Canada Post reserves some FSAs for special functions, such as for test or promotional purposes, as well as for sorting mail bound for destinations outside Canada. The current Statistics Canada estimate of over 850,000 active postal codes represents about 12% of the entire postal code "space", leaving more than ample room for expansion.
Postal barcodes
When a piece of mail reaches its first major Canada Post sortation facility, a multiline optical character readerMultiline Optical Character Reader
A Multiline Optical Character Reader, or MLOCR, is a type of mail sorting machine that uses Optical Character Recognition technology to determine how to route mail through the postal system....
(MLOCR) system looks at its destination address, translates its postal code into a barcode
Barcode
A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows data about the object to which it attaches. Originally barcodes represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1 dimensional . Later they evolved into rectangles,...
, and prints that barcode on the faced envelope. For regular-size mail, a UV
Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3 eV to 124 eV...
-fluorescent barcode
CPC Binary Barcode
CPC Binary Barcode is Canada Post's proprietary symbology used in its automated mail sortation operations. This barcode is used on regular-size pieces of mail, especially mail sent using Canada Post's service...
is applied to the lower-right corner of the envelope; for larger envelopes, a special four-state barcode known as PostBar
PostBar
PostBar, also known as CPC 4-State, is the black-ink barcode system used by Canada Post in its automated mail sorting and delivery operations. It is similar to other 4 State barcode systems used by Australia Post and the United Kingdom's Royal Mail , but uses an obscured structure and encoding...
is applied, which encodes additional relevant information along with the postal code. The four-state barcode is put on a sticker, which is then applied to the envelope either on its lower-right corner, or just above the destination address. The complexity of the symbologies used does not make manual pre-printing of the barcodes practical, especially since the special ink used in the fluorescent barcode is not normally available to the public. However, businesses that want to reduce costs by pre-printing their own barcodes can enter into a licensing agreement with Canada Post, which includes either existing computer software for printing barcodes or the symbology specifications for businesses that wish to develop their own software. Pieces of mail that are hand-sorted instead of machine-sorted are not barcoded. This is sometimes the case when sender and recipient are in rural areas and geographically close. The majority of handsorted mail is either inflexible or too large to fit in the MLOCR.
Urbanization
Urbanization is the name Canada Post uses to refer to the process where it replaces a rural postal code (i.e., a code with a zero as its second character) with urban postal codes. The vacated rural postal code can then be assigned to another community or retired. Canada Post decides when to urbanize a certain community when its population reaches a certain level, though different factors may also be involved. For example, in early 2008, the postal code G0N 3M0 (covering Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-CartierSainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier, Quebec
Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier is a town in Quebec, Canada, located in the regional county municipality of La Jacques-Cartier, in the administrative region of Capitale-Nationale. The Jacques-Cartier River passes through the city....
, Fossambault-sur-le-Lac
Fossambault-sur-le-Lac, Quebec
Fossambault-sur-le-Lac is a French-speaking town in the south part of Quebec, Canada, in the regional county municipality of La Jacques-Cartier, just north of Quebec City. It has a population of 1,532...
and Lac-Saint-Joseph, Quebec
Lac-Saint-Joseph, Quebec
Lac-Saint-Joseph is a town in Quebec, Canada, located on the eponymous Lake Saint-Joseph.-Demographics:Population trend:* Population in 2006: 266 * Population in 2001: 184* Population in 1996: 83...
) was urbanized to postal codes beginning with G3N to remove ambiguities and confusions caused by similar street names.
Uniquely among province-wide districts, New Brunswick (postal district E) is completely urbanized, its rural codes having been phased out.
Santa Claus
In 1974, staff at Canada Post's MontrealMontreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
office were noticing a considerable number of letters addressed to Santa Claus
Santa Claus
Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...
coming into the postal system, and those letters were being treated as undeliverable. Since those employees did not want the writers, mostly young children, to be disappointed at the lack of response, they started answering the letters themselves. The amount of mail sent to Santa Claus increased every Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
, up to the point that Canada Post decided to start an official Santa Claus letter-response program in 1983. Approximately one million letters come in to Santa Claus each Christmas, including from outside of Canada, and all of them are answered, in the same languages in which they are written. Canada Post introduced a special address for mail to Santa Claus, complete with its own postal code:
- SANTA CLAUS
- NORTH POLE H0H 0H0
- CANADA
In French, Santa's name Père Noël
Père Noël
Père Noël is a legendary gift-giver during Christmas in France and French-speaking areas, identified with Father Christmas or Santa Claus in English speaking territories....
translates as "Father Christmas", addressed as:
- PÈRE NOËL
- PÔLE NORD H0H 0H0
- CANADA
H0H 0H0 was chosen for this special seasonal use as it reads as "Ho ho ho
Ho ho ho
"Ho ho ho" is a rendition of a particular type of deep-throated laugh or chuckle which is of Gaelic derivation. It is also used as the laugh of Santa Claus and the Jolly Green Giant.Also as "expressing laughter" is recorded from c...
".
The H0- prefix is a contradiction: the 0 indicates a very small, rural village, but H is used to designate Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, the second-largest city in Canada. As such, the H0- prefix is almost completely empty, with one exception: H0M, assigned to the international Akwesasne
Akwesasne
The Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne is a Mohawk Nation territory that straddles the intersection of international and provincial borders on both banks of the Saint Lawrence River. Most of the land is in what is otherwise the United States...
tribal reserve on the U.S.-Canada border, is the only other H0- postal code in active use.
Transition points to the Canadian Forces Postal Service
For transition of mail from the civilian to the Canadian Forces Postal ServiceMilitary mail
A primary feature of military mail systems is that normally they are subsidized to ensure that military mail posted between duty stations abroad and the home country does not cost the sender any more than normal domestic mail traffic...
, the postal codes of the three corresponding military post offices on Canadian soil are used. These being the Fleet Mail Offices (FMO) in Victoria, BC, V9A 7N2 and Halifax, NS, B3K 5X5 and the Canadian Forces Post Office (CFPO) in Belleville, ON, K8N 5W6, dependant upon the final destination. These postal codes each represent a number of military post offices abroad which are specified not by postal code, but by CFPO or FMO number. The LDUs in this case corresponding not so much to a physical as to a virtual delivery unit, since mail is not delivered locally, but instead forwarded to the actual delivery units at Canadian military bases and ships abroad.
- Name
- Slot #
- PO Box 5053 Stn Forces
- Belleville ON K8N 5W6
- CANADA
In this example, Canada Post will deliver to the CFPO at Belleville and the Canadian Forces Postal System will continue transport to the addressee at CFPO 5053 (in Geilenkirchen, Germany) by whatever means and timing the military will deem appropriate.
Alternate uses
Postal codes can be correlated with databased information from censuses or health registries to create a geographic profile of an area's population. For instance, postal codes have been used to compare children's risk of developing cancer and to describe a neighbourhood's entrenched poverty (e.g. "Vancouver's Downtown EastsideDowntown Eastside
The Downtown Eastside is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is known as "Canada's poorest postal code"....
is Canada's poorest postal code").
As Canadian electoral districts
Electoral district (Canada)
An electoral district in Canada, also known as a constituency or a riding, is a geographical constituency upon which Canada's representative democracy is based...
frequently follow postal code areas, citizens can identify their local elected representative using their postal code. Provincial and federal government websites offer an online "look-up" feature based on postal codes. Although A1A 1A1 is sometimes displayed as a generic code for this purpose, it is actually a genuine postal code in use in the Lower Battery, St. John's Harbour
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
St. John's is the capital and largest city in Newfoundland and Labrador, and is the oldest English-founded city in North America. It is located on the eastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland. With a population of 192,326 as of July 1, 2010, the St...
, Newfoundland. Another common "example" code in Canada Post materials, K1A 0B1, is the valid code for Place de la Poste, the Canada Post Place office building in Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
.
External links
- Canada Post
- Householder Counts and Maps
- National Presortation Schematic: Includes monthly bulletin detailing postal code changes
- Postal Code Lookup
- Canada Forward Sortation Area (FSA) Map: Postal code break down.
