Forward sortation area

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 codes are alphanumeric. They are in the format A1A 1A1, where A is a letter and 1 is a digit, with a space separating the third and fourth characters. As of September 2014, there were 855,815 postal codes using Forward Sortation Areas from A0A in Newfoundland to Y1A in the Yukon.

Canada Post provides a free postal code look-up tool on its website, via its mobile application, and sells hard-copy directories and CD-ROMs. 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.

When writing out the postal address for a location within Canada, the postal code follows the abbreviation for the province or territory.

Numbered postal zones were first used in Toronto in 1925. Mail to a Toronto address in zone 5 would be addressed in this format:

As of 1943, Toronto was divided into 14 zones, numbered from 1 to 15, except that 7 and 11 were unused, and there was a 2B zone.

By the early 1960s, other cities in Canada had been divided into postal zones, including Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Vancouver as well as Toronto. For example, an address in Vancouver would be addressed as:

In the late 1960s, however, the Post Office began implementing a three-digit zone number scheme in major cities to replace existing one and two-digit zone numbers, starting in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. For example, an address in Metropolitan Toronto would be addressed as:

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