Local short name form

Official name

Area

Population

Capital

Currency

International telephone access code

ISO 3166 country codes

Car nationality plate code

Internet country code

GRC Country Code

English:

   1,234.45 

(where . indicates the decimal separator and , the thousands separator)

French:

   1 234,45

(where , indicates the decimal separator and a space the thousands separator)

   Note: This section last updated 4th April 2021

   mm/dd/yyyy
   mm-dd-yyyy
   mm.dd.yyyy

   dd/mm/yyyy

   yyyy-mm-dd

Both the 12-hour and the 24-hour clock notation are used.

   14:32  

A dialect and pronunciation map and resources for Canada

Canada is officially bilingual English (spoken as a mother language by 14 122 770 Canadians) and French (6 200 000 mother-language speakers). Inuktitut (along with French and English) is the official language in the new province of Nunavut. Approximately 16% of Canadians are bilingual English-French (slightly more than half of these live in Québec province). The province of Québec has been officially unilingular French since 1977, though 8% of the population of Québec is native English-speaking (mainly living in Montréal, the Ottawa Valley and the Eastern Townships near the Ontario border). In Québec, legislation demands that all advertising material be sent in French unless your contact has made a written request to receive it in English. The province of New Brunswick is bilingual. The other provinces and territories (thus all of those except Québec, New Brunswick and Nunavut) are officially English-speaking. There are, however, significant minorities speaking English in Québec and French in the other provinces. These speakers are accorded the same rights regardless of where in Canada they live.

There are some 23 000 French speakers in Alberta, 20 000 in British Colombia, 27 000 in Manitoba, 230 000 in New Brunswick, 2 000 in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1 000 in Northwest Territories and Nunavut, 23 000 in Nova Scotia, 340 000 in Ontario, 4 000 in Prince Edward Island, 6 000 000 in Québec, 10 000 in Saskatchewan and 500 in Yukon.

Québecois differs from Metropolitan French and this needs to be taken into account in mailings. Canadian English differs in its colloquialisms and spelling from both US English and British English.

There are at least 60 first-nation (Indian, Métis and Inuit) languages spoken by about 182 000 people in Canada. Many of these are spoken by few people and in some cases are threatened with extinction as they are not spoken by younger natives of these tribes. Addresses are unlikely to be encountered in these languages. The most widely spoken of these languages are Western Cree (35 000 speakers in North Central Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta); Eastern Canadian Inuktitut (14 000 speakers west of Hudson Bay, and east through Baffin Island, Québec and Labrador); and Western Ojibwa (35 000 speakers from Lake Superior westwards and north-westward into Saskatchewan).

Since 1980, married women in Québec have been required to retain their maiden name. Those women married before 1980 have been allowed to choose between their husband’s name and their maiden name. Children may take the surname of either their mother or their father, or a hyphenated version of both.

Similar laws have been put into practice in most of the other provinces.

   Tables of names can be acquired: given names , surnames/family names , family name prefixes , forms of address , job titles 

For French company names, it is more correct, where the nature of a company is mentioned in its name, that this precedes the name of the company, thus:

   Boulangerie Dupont

You will often, however, also find these activity indications after the company name, thus:

   Dupont, Boulangerie
   Dupont (Boulangerie)

   Note: This section last updated 12th March 2019

Common company types include:

   Cooperative/Coopérative
   Inc. (Incorporated)
   Ltd (Limited)
   NT (iNTermediary – the company is a financial intermediary)
   Paternariat à Responsabilité Limitée
   SC (Société en Commandite)
   SARF (Société par actions de régime fédéral)
   SCS (Société en Commandité Simple)
   SENCRL (Société en nom Collectif à Responsabilité Limitée)
   SCC (Société Commerciale Canadienne)
   ULC - Unlimited Liability Corporation.  This may be preceded by a state abbreviation.  For example: AULC: Alberta Unlimited Liability Corporation.

   Comprehensive tables of these strings can be acquired – see http:www.grcdi.nl/addresses.htm 

The Canadian Post Office prefers that addresses are formatted to contain:

   - Only upper case (though Canada Post accepts mixed-case addresses)
   - No punctuation (but diacritics should be used for mixed case addresses)
   - Standard abbreviations

The format is:

   RECIPIENTS NAME AND/OR TITLE
   DEPARTMENT/BUILDING NAME
   COMPANY NAME
   NUMBER[ ]THOROUGHFARE 
   SETTLEMENT[ ]PROVINCE CODE[  ]POSTAL CODE

For example:

should be written

Though this is the preferred format for the CPC, the CPC encourages all mailers to respect the wishes of customers in matters of format. The Canadian Addressing Guide has taken care to accommodate the requirements of the English and French languages by recognizing and accepting the use of upper- and lower-case characters, including accents, as well as the full spelling of and punctuation between addressing elements.

The government of the province of Québec, for example, prefers their addresses to be written in a way which is more attuned to the norms of the French language:

   Monsieur Jules Thibault
   Chef de la direction
   Assurances Atout prix
   Immeuble Caron, 3e étage
   1291, rue Racine Est, bureau 400
   Saint-Eustache (Québec)  J7R 7K6

See http://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?id=3415 (in French)

Unit or apartment number may precede or follow the street name, preceded by a type indicator such as APT. A # or the French abbreviation no. should never be used before the house number. If more space is required, this information can be moved to a line above. If the unit number is written before the house number (called the civic number by Canada Post) there should be a hyphen between the numbers is this way:

   10-123

If the house number is followed by a letter, there should be no space between them. If followed by a fraction, there should be one space:

   123A
   123 1/2

If the street name is numeric, there should be a space between the house number and the street name:

   123 22ND AVE

The street name used must be the one recognized by the municipality and may not be translated.

The postal code is placed on the same address line as the settlement and province, and is separated from the province by two spaces. If the total length of this line is greater than 40, the Canadian Post Office prefers that the postal code is moved (left-justified) to the line beneath.

The province codes to be used in addresses are:

Addresses may be written in French or English regardless of the majority language of the area concerned. The street name should not be translated, and the thoroughfare type may only be translated in the cases of street (ST)/rue, avenue (AVE/AV) and boulevard (BLVD/BOUL). Envelopes may contain two addresses, one for each language, next to each other horizontally and divided using a thick black line:

Delivery is not always to a street address. Alternative delivery forms are:

   CF (Call For/Envoi à réclamer au comptoir. Allows customers to receive mail that cannot be delivered  by their regular delivery service)
   CP (Case Postale/casier postal.  Post office box)
   DR (Direct – large user mail)
   GD (General Delivery.  Delivery to customers without a post office box, customers without a fixed address or people travelling)
   IM (Itinéraire Motorisé. Delivery of mail to industrial parks or areas)
   LB (Lock Box/post office box)                                                                              
   LC (Letter Carrier/Facteur – delivery by letter carrier)
   MR (Mobile Route.  Delivery of mail to industrial parks or areas)
   PO Box (Post Office Box)
   PR (Poste Restante. Delivery to customers without a post office box, customers without a fixed address or people travelling)
   RR (Rural Route, Route Rurale.  Delivery by contractor to customers living along or near well-defined roads in a reasonably well-settled area)
   SS (Suburban Service, Service Suburbaine. Delivery by a contractor to group mail boxes.  Usually found near or on the perimeters of urban areas)

In these cases, these abbreviations are written instead of a street name, and they are followed by a number (except for General Delivery) and possibly also letters. The address may also include a so-called installation type, followed by a name. These are:

   CC (Concession Commerciale)
   CDO (Commercial Dealership Outlet)
   CMC (Community Mail Centre)
   CPC (Centre Postale Communautaire)
   CSP (Comptoire Service Postal)
   ETC (Établissement de traitement du courrier)
   LCD (Letter Carrier Depot)
   MPP (Mail Processing Plant)
   PDF (Poste de Facteurs)
   RPO (Retail Post Outlet)
   STN (Station)
   SUCC (Succursale)

For example:

or

or

Rural Route, Suburban Service and Mobile Route addresses may now also contain additional street address information, written on the lines above the Rural Route address in this way:

Bilingual addresses should be printed side-by-side on a envelope with a solid black line between the addresses, and with clear space between the black line and the addresses.

   A table containing information about the relevant position of elements within address blocks can be acquired 

Street address

   8 rue Montfort
   98 rue d’Alberta
   4 avenue de la Gare

Directionals

Sub-building indicator

   Comprehensive tables of these strings can be acquired – see http:www.grcdi.nl/addresses.htm 

Thoroughfare types

   Comprehensive tables of these strings can be acquired – see http:www.grcdi.nl/addresses.htm 

Other elements commonly found in address databases

This is written as Case Postale (CP) in French, and PO Box in English.

Canada has around 700 000 Postal Codes (Code Postal), one for every 40 people. The area that they cover can vary in size from a single building to vast rural areas. Postal codes in Canada are formed as follows:

   A9A[ ]9A9

Each character must be printed in capital letters.

The part of the postal code before the space is called the “Forward Sortation Area”. The part after the space is called the “Local Delivery Unit”.

The first character of the code represents the province or part of province (Ontario and Québec only) covered by the code:

   This regions/postal code data can be acquired as a data file 

Note: The forward sortation areas X0E, X0G and X1A are in Northwest Territories; the forward sortation areas X0A, X0B and X0C are in Nunavut.

The first digit of the postal code cannot therefore be D, F, I, O, Q, U, W or Z.

The letters D, F, I, O, Q and U are not used in any part of the postal code.

A digit between 1 and 9 in the second position indicates an urban postal code, serviced by letter carriers or community mail boxes. A “0” indicates a rural postal code serviced by rural route drivers and/or postal outlets.

The third character describes the exact area covered of a city, town or other geographical area.

In urban areas, the Local Delivery Unit may indicate a single street side, a single building or a large-user. In rural areas, these three digits identify a specific settlement.

   Metadata containing postal code formatting rules, exceptions and regular expressions can be acquired 

Canada - Postal code format graphic

Canada - Postal code format

Canada - Postal code specifics

Canada - Postal code regular expression

Postal code level of coverage

Canada - Postal code map

   Note: This section last updated 23rd September 2023

Canada Post prefers that the settlement name used be the official one. However, to please the recipients I advise the use of the correct language form for the person being addressed, especially in Québec province. For French language names, respect diacritic marks - use Montréal rather than Montreal, Québec rather than Quebec and so on.

Refer to Exonyms in Canada for full lists of place names in Canada in other languages.

The 296 rural municipalities of Saskatchewan contain numbers in their names in this way: Argyle No. 1, Mount Pleasant No. 2, Enniskillen No. 3 etc. The numbers increase (though not strictly sequentially) running from west to east and from south to north. Thus, Argyle No. 1 is in Saskatchewan’s southwestern corner. The numbers are used and they also serve to distinguish municipalities with the same name. For example, the city of Moose Jaw is surrounded by the rural municipality of Moose Jaw No. 161.

Rural Municipality Numbers in Southern Saskatchewan ^[2]

   Alternate place name forms/postal code tables can be acquired at http:www.grcdi.nl/settlements.htm 

   Other language place name data can be acquired at http://www.grcdi.nl/otherlanguageplace.htm 

St-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Québec. The only place name in the world containing two exclamation marks.

Canada consists of 10 provinces and 3 territories. These are:

    Alberta 
    British Columbia 
    Manitoba 
    New Brunswick 
    Newfoundland and Labrador 
    Northwest Territories  (territory)
    Nova Scotia 
    Nunavut  (territory)
    Ontario 
    Prince Edward Island 
    Québec 
    Saskatchewan 
    Yukon  (territory)

Administrative districts graphic

   Note: This section last updated 12th December 2017

All Canadian telephone area codes (from abroad) have a length of 3 digits. Subscriber numbers are 7 digits long. Area codes are based on city or region and landline, mobile or VOIP numbers cannot be distinguished from one another. The area codes 500, 533 or 600 are mobile numbers only.

   Tables of telephone number information/formats can be acquired – see http://www.grcdi.nl/telephone.htm