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Put the recipient's name, street address, then city, the two-letter province or territory code, and the postal code (A1A 1A1) on the same last line, with two spaces between the province code and the postal code. That exact layout matches Canada Post's machine-sorting spec and gets the letter moving fastest.
| Line | Example |
|---|---|
| Recipient name | Sarah Chen |
| Street address (unit first, if any) | Unit 4 - 123 Main Street |
| City, province code, postal code | Toronto ON M4B 1B3 |
| Country (only when mailing from outside Canada) | CANADA |
Canadian postal codes follow an A1A 1A1 pattern: letter, digit, letter, space, digit, letter, digit. The first letter tells you the region, which is handy for spotting a wrong address: M means Toronto, K means eastern Ontario, T means Alberta, V means British Columbia, H means Montreal, and so on. A zero in the second position marks a rural address; a non-zero digit means urban. If the postal code you were given starts with a letter that doesn't match the province, one of the two is wrong.
Canada Post's addressing spec asks for the postal code on the same line as the city and province, separated by two spaces, with no commas between the city and the province code. It looks fussy, but it exists for the sorting machines: a consistent layout lets optical readers find the postal code in the same spot every time. Block capitals and no punctuation (no periods in "St", no commas) read most reliably. Handwritten addresses in block capitals work, but machine-printed is better.
Put the unit designator before the street address, on the same line: "Unit 4 - 123 Main Street" or "Apt 12, 456 Queen Street West." Don't bury the apartment number after the postal code or on its own line where a sorter might miss it. Missing unit numbers are one of the top reasons Canadian mail gets delayed or returned: the building gets the letter, but the carrier has no way to know which door it's for.
Add "CANADA" in capital letters as the last line, below the postal code line. Use US postage at the international letter rate, or skip the post office entirely and have it printed and mailed from within Canada-side handling through a service like LetterAgent. Either way, keep the Canadian address format exactly as above: the country line is the only addition.
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LetterAgent is a working name. Prices include print, postage, and our service fee. US prices in USD, Canadian prices in CAD (Canadian prices exclude applicable sales tax, added at checkout). Currently in private testing.
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