A Canadian postal code is a string of six characters that form part of a postal address in Canada. Like British postcodes, Canada's postal codes are alphanumeric. Most other postal and ZIP code systems use only numbers. Canadian postal codes are in the format of ANA NAN, where A is a letter of the alphabet, and N is a digit, with a required space separating the third and fourth characters. An example is K1A 0B1, which is for Canada Post's Ottawa headquarters. Currently, according to Statistics Canada, about 800,000 postal codes exist in Canada. A British pillar box. ... An address is a code and abstract concept expressing the fixed location of a home, business or other building on the earths surface. ... UK postal codes are known as postcodes. ... A postal code (known in various countries as a post code, postcode, or ZIP code) is a series of letters and/or digits appended to a postal address for the purpose of sorting mail. ... Generally speaking, the term alphanumeric refers to anything that consists of only letters and numbers. ... Mr. ... Canada Post (French: Postes Canada) is a Canadian postal service operated as an independent crown corporation. ... Motto: Advance Ottawa/Ottawa en avant Coordinates: Country Canada Province Ontario County Established 1850 as Bytown City Mayor Bob Chiarelli Governing body Ottawa City Council MPs / MPPs Members of Parliament (MPs) Mauril Bélanger (LPC), Paul Dewar (NDP), John Baird (CPC), Royal Galipeau (CPC), David McGuinty (LPC),Pierre Lemieux (CPC... Statistics Canada is the Canadian federal government bureau commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. ...

Canada Post provides a free postal code look-up tool on its website, and also sells off-line postal code look-up tools in the forms of hard-copy directories and CD-ROMs. Many vendors also sell validation tools, which allow customers to properly match addresses and postal codes together. The CD-ROM (an abbreviation for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (ROM)) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. ...

History

Postal zones were used in Canada as early as 1925, with the city of Toronto being the first city to receive such a system for sorting mail by destination. This system divided the major cities into a series of zones; for instance, a 1960 Canada Post example letter was from "Toronto 3, Ontario" to "Winnipeg 5, Manitoba," with the number indicating a part of the city. In 1961 the system served five cities: Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. London, Ontario was later divided into zones. The system became increasingly unworkable, however. In the large cities the codes were made two-digit, and in Toronto and Montreal three-digit codes were introduced. The codes changed regularly causing confusion and higher costs to businesses. 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... City motto: Concordia Salus (Latin: Well-being through harmony) Province Québec Mayor Gérald Tremblay Area  - % water 366. ... Motto: Template:Unhide = Unum Cum Virtute Multorum (One With the Strength of Many) Location City Information Established: 1738 (Fort Rouge), 1873 (City of Winnipeg) Area: 465. ... Vancouver (pronounced: ) is a Canadian city in the province of British Columbia. ... Nickname: The Forest City Coordinates: Country Canada Province Ontario County Middlesex County Settled 1826 (as village) Incorporated 1855 (as city) City Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best Governing Body London City Council MPs Sue Barnes (LPC) Joe Fontana (LPC) Irene Mathyssen (NDP) Joe Preston (CPC) MPPs Chris Bentley (OLP) Deb Matthews...

As the large Canadian cities continued to grow, and with them the volumes of mail passing through the country's postal system, it became more challenging for employees who hand-sorted mail to memorize and keep track of all the individual letter carrier routes within each city. Advancing 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 actually one of the last western countries to get a nationwide postal code system. A report submitted to Canada Post in 1969 recommended adopting a more general "postal code" system, leading to greater feasibility of automated mail sorting in Canada. Canada Post first implemented the new postal code system on a trial basis at the municipal level in Ottawa beginning on April 1, 1971, finally advancing to a provincial-level trial of the system in Manitoba, and then in turn, gradually rolling out the system to the rest of the country from 1972 to 1974. The rollout was marked by a large advertising campaign costing some $545,000. Every Canadian was mailed a package giving their new postal code, an instruction booklet, a group of pre-paid letters to tell friends and family their new postal code, and a free address book. Postal codes were not made mandatory, but advertisements ran stating that letters without postal codes would arrive later since they had to be sorted by hand. 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 them/Please include them on the bottom. The ad ran only once before being accused of sexism by NDP MP John Rodriguez. The Postmaster General later apologized for the ad. Today, mail addressed to a Canadian location without using a postal code is very uncommon, though it will usually still reach its intended destination. 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ... Motto: Advance Ottawa/Ottawa en avant Coordinates: Country Canada Province Ontario County Established 1850 as Bytown City Mayor Bob Chiarelli Governing body Ottawa City Council MPs / MPPs Members of Parliament (MPs) Mauril Bélanger (LPC), Paul Dewar (NDP), John Baird (CPC), Royal Galipeau (CPC), David McGuinty (LPC),Pierre Lemieux (CPC... April 1 is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 274 days remaining. ... 1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1971 calendar). ... Motto: Gloriosus et Liber (Latin: Glorious and free) Official languages English and French, per mandate of the Constitution Act 1982 Flower Prairie Crocus Tree White Spruce Bird Great Grey Owl Capital Winnipeg Largest city Winnipeg Lieutenant-Governor John Harvard Premier Gary Doer (NDP) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 14... 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... ISO 4217 Code CAD User(s) Canada Inflation rate 2. ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... The word thong can mean several things: A thin leather strap. ... The New Democratic Party (NDP; Nouveau Parti démocratique in French) is a political party in Canada with a social democratic philosophy that contests elections at both the federal and provincial levels. ... John Rodriguez (born February 12, 1937 in Georgetown, Guyana) is a former Canadian politician, who represented the Ontario riding of Nickel Belt in the Canadian House of Commons from 1972 to 1980, and 1984 to 1993. ... The Postmaster General of Canada was the Canadian cabinet minister responsible for Canada Post. ...

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, as well as 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. March 20, 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. Typists also criticized the decision to make the code alphanumeric, arguing that an all-number code was far easier to type. Canada Post defended this decision by stating that the all-number system in the United States had failed as there were too few combinations. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers or CUPW (pronounced Cup W) is a public sector trade union representing postal workers employed at Canada Post. ... March 20 is the 79th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (80th in Leap years). ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ...

Components of a postal code

Forward sortation areas

A forward sortation area (FSA) is an entity denoted by the first three characters of any Canadian postal code. The first letter of an FSA determines its "postal district", which covers a major geographic region or metropolitan centre. Outside of Quebec and Ontario, postal districts cover whole provinces and territories. Quebec and Ontario have three and five postal districts respectively, because of the large sizes of those two provinces' populations. At the low part of the population curve are Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, which share a postal district. Canada Post decided not to give Nunavut its own postal district when the territory was created in 1999, simply because of its relatively small population. The digit in an FSA specifies if the area is urban or rural. A digit of zero indicates a wide-area rural region, while all other digits indicate urban areas. The second letter of an FSA represents a specific rural region, entire medium-sized city, or section of a major metropolitan area. Motto: Je me souviens (French: I remember) Official languages French Flower Blue Flag Iris (Iris versicolor Linné) Tree Yellow Birch Bird Snowy Owl Capital Quebec City Largest city Montreal Lieutenant-Governor Lise Thibault Premier Jean Charest (PLQ) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 75 24 Area Total  - Land  - Water  (% of... Motto: Ut Incepit Fidelis Sic Permanet (Latin: Loyal she began, loyal she remains) Official languages English (French has some legal status but is not fully co-official) Flower White Trillium Tree Eastern White Pine Bird Common Loon Capital Toronto Largest city Toronto Lieutenant-Governor James K. Bartleman Premier Dalton McGuinty... Motto: Nunavut Sannginivut (Inuktitut: Nunavut our strength or Our land our strength) Official languages Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English, French Capital Iqaluit Largest city Iqaluit Commissioner Ann Meekitjuk Hanson Premier Paul Okalik (independent) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 1 Nancy Karetak-Lindell 1 Willie Adams Area Total  â€¢ Land  â€¢ Water    (% of total... Motto: None Official languages Dene Suline, Cree, Dogrib, English, French, Gwichʼin, Inuktitut, Slavey Flower Mountain avens Capital Yellowknife Largest city Yellowknife Commissioner Tony Whitford Premier Joe Handley (Consensus government - no party affiliations) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 1 1 Area Total  - Land  - Water    (% of total)  Ranked 3rd 1... Canada Post (French: Postes Canada) is a Canadian postal service operated as an independent crown corporation. ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ...

Map of Canadian postal districts.
FSA lists: A • B • C • E • G • H • J • K • L • M • N • P • R • S • T • V • X • Y

A directory of FSAs is provided here, 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 one representative community located within each rural FSA. Medium-sized cities may have one dedicated FSA, while larger cities have more than one FSA within their limits. For FSAs that span 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. Download high resolution version (924x782, 54 KB)Map of Canada highlighting allocation of the first letter of postal codes I, the creator of this image, hereby release it into the public domain. ... Download high resolution version (924x782, 54 KB)Map of Canada highlighting allocation of the first letter of postal codes I, the creator of this image, hereby release it into the public domain. ... Newfoundland and Labrador - 35 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ... Nova Scotia - 76 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ... Prince Edward Island - 7 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ... New Brunswick - 110 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ... Eastern Quebec - 136 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ... Montreal - 122 FSAs Note: No postal codes yet exist that start with H6. ... Western and Northern Quebec - 155 FSAs Categories: Canada Post | Quebec ... Eastern Ontario - 84 FSAs Note: No postal codes yet begin with K3* or K5*. Most populated FSAs Statistics Canada, 2001 Census K0K, 100,202 K0A, 88,384 K0L, 67,817 K0C, 50,698 K1V, 46,082 Least populated FSAs Statistics Canada, 2001 Census K1P, 72 K1A, 100 K8B... Central Ontario - 159 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ... Toronto - 102 FSAs Note: There are no rural FSAs in Toronto, hence no postal codes start with M0x. ... Western Ontario - 119 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ... Northern Ontario - 57 FSAs Most populated FSAs Statistics Canada, 2001 Census P0M, 51,197 P0T, 40,119 P0H, 38,600 P6A, 35,012 P1B, 33,596 Least populated FSAs Statistics Canada, 2001 Census P0Y, 49 P7K, 1,643 P7J, 2,055 P1C, 2,224 P7G, 2,436 Categories... Manitoba - 64 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ... Saskatchewan - 48 FSAs Currently there are no S1* or S5* codes. ... Alberta - 150 FSAs Categories: | | ... British Columbia - 188 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ... Nunavut and Northwest Territories - 6 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ... Yukon - 3 FSAs Categories: Canada Post ...

Local delivery units

A local delivery unit (LDU) is the name given to the last three characters of a postal code. 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 even a portion of a very large one), a single (large) institution such as a university or a hospital, or any business that receives large volumes of mail on a regular basis. LDUs ending in zero always correspond to postal facilities, from regular post offices 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. One particular LDU, "9Z9", is used exclusively for Business Reply Mail. In rural FSAs, the first two characters of an LDU are usually assigned in alphanumerical order by the name of each community. Small-town post office and town hall in Lockhart, Alabama A post office is a facility (in most countries, a government one) where the public can purchase postage stamps for mailing correspondence or merchandise, and also drop off or pick up packages or other special-delivery items. ... Rural delivery service, formerly known as Rural Free Delivery (RFD), is the service by which the U.S. post office delivers mail directly to residents in rural areas. ...

Local delivery unit lists are not provided here, as LDUs are always being added, changed, or deleted at one-month intervals, and as Canada Post already has a page on its website that provides the same function as such lists. Canada Post (French: Postes Canada) is a Canadian postal service operated as an independent crown corporation. ...

How many postal codes are possible?

Because of the use of OCR technology in Canada Post's overall mail-sorting process, the letters D, F, I, O, Q, and U are not used in postal codes, due to their visual similarities to other letters and digits, especially when rendered as cursive handwriting. The letters W and Z are used in postal codes, but are not used as the first letter of any postal code at the present time. This scheme allows for an upper limit of 3,600 FSAs, and with 2,000 possible LDUs in each FSA, this allows for a theoretical maximum of 7.2 million possible postal 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 800,000 active postal codes only represents about 11 percent of the entire postal code "space," leaving more than ample room for expansion. Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, involves computer software designed to translate images of typewritten text (usually captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text, or to translate pictures of characters into a standard encoding scheme representing them in (ASCII or Unicode). ...

Postal barcodes

When a piece of mail reaches the first major Canada Post sortation facility in its journey from sender to recipient, a multiline optical character reader system looks at its destination address, translates its postal code into a barcode, and prints that barcode on the faced envelope. For regular-size pieces of mail, a UV-fluorescent barcode is applied to the lower-right corner of the envelope, while for larger envelopes, a special four-state barcode known as PostBar is applied, which encodes additional relevant information along with the destination 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 do not make manual pre-printing of the barcodes practical, especially considering that 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 4-state barcodes can enter into a licensing agreement with Canada Post, which includes either existing computer software for properly printing barcodes, or the exact symbology specifications for businesses that wish to develop their own barcode software. Pieces of mail that are hand-sorted instead of machine-sorted are not barcoded. This is usually the case when sender and recipient are geographically close. Multiline Optical Character Reader refers to a class of mail sorting machines that captures an image of the front of letter-sized mail, uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to find and decode the entire address, looks up the ZIP+4 code and Delivery point, sprays a POSTNET barcode representing... Wikipedia encoded in Code 128 A series of numbers encoded in UPC Wikipedia encoded in Code 93 Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia encoded in the DataMatrix 2D barcode A barcode (also bar code) is a machine-readable representation of information in a visual format on a surface. ... Ultraviolet (UV) light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than soft X-rays. ... CPC Binary Barcode is Canada Posts proprietary symbology used in its automated mail sortation operations. ... PostBar, also known as CPC 4-State, is the black-ink barcode system used by, among others, Australia Post, the United States Postal Service, The Royal Mail in the United Kingdom, and by Canada Post in its automated mail sortation and delivery operations. ...

Canada Post also uses a simpler optical mark recognition system for encoding postal codes, which is printed to the right of the destination address on an envelope. This code, which uses three rows of four marks each, and is always applied before sending the envelope into the postal system proper, is simple enough to be printed manually with just a template and a pencil. Optical mark recognition is the process of capturing data by contrasting reflectivity at predetermined positions on a page. ...

Urbanization

Urbanization is the name Canada Post uses to refer to the process where it replaces a given community's rural postal code (i.e., a code with a zero in its FSA) with urban postal codes. The vacated rural postal code can then be assigned to another community, or retired altogether. Canada Post decides when to urbanize a certain community when its population reaches a certain pre-chosen level.

Santa Claus

In 1974, staff at Canada Post's Montreal office were noticing a considerable amount 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 those writing the letters, mostly young children, being disappointed at the lack of responses, 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. 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... City motto: Concordia Salus (Latin: Well-being through harmony) Province Québec Mayor Gérald Tremblay Area  - % water 366. ... For other uses, see Santa Claus (disambiguation). ... Christmas or Christmas Day is a holiday that marks the birth of Jesus, the central figure of Christianity. ... 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Canada Post commissioned a special address for mail to Santa Claus, complete with its own dedicated postal code:

SANTA CLAUS

NORTH POLE  H0H 0H0

CANADA

H0H 0H0 was chosen because it looks like "Ho ho ho". Ho ho ho is the convention in English and other languages to write the way Santa Claus laughs. ...

See also

• Geocoding

Geocoding is the process of assigning geographic coordinates (e. ...

External links

• Canada Post
  • Householder Counts and Maps
  • National Presortation Schematic: Includes monthly bulletin detailing postal code changes
  • Canada Forward Sortation Area (FSA) Map: Postal code break down.
• Doug Ewell's page explaining Canadian Postal Codes
• The Santa Claus story

• Civilization.ca - A Chronology of Canadian Postal History
  • The Postal Code
• FactsCanada.ca -- Friday Feature 2001-01Fr -- Canada Post Corporation
• Statistics Canada's Postal Code Conversion File reference guide
• Geolocation lookup by Canadian Postal Code
• Address/Postal Code to GeoCode Translator API