Postal Code (FSA)

Owned by Diego Cesa de Meira (Unlicensed)
Sept 13, 2019
2 min read

Description

The Forward Sortation Area (FSA) Boundary File depicts the boundaries of 1,621 forward sortation areas (identified by the first three characters of the postal codeOM) derived from postal codesOM captured from the 2016 Census of Population questionnaires.

Through analysis of the postal codesOM reported by census households, a single FSA was assigned to each dissemination block based on the most frequently reported FSA for the dissemination block. Unreported dissemination blocks were assigned an FSA based on proximity to reported dissemination blocks in the same province or territory or nearest Canada Post Corporation delivery installation.

The 2016 Census FSA Boundary File provides a framework for mapping and spatial analysis. It is available in two types: cartographic and digital. The cartographic boundary file depicts the 2016 FSAs with the shoreline of the major land mass of Canada and its coastal islands. The digital boundary file depicts the full extent of the 2016 FSAs, including the coastal water area.

Definition

A forward sortation area (FSA) is a way to designate a geographical unit based on the first three characters in a Canadian postal code. All postal codes that start with the same three characters—for example, K1A—are together considered an FSA.

Each character in an FSA code provides information:

  • The first character is a letter that identifies the province or territory (although Nunavut and the Northwest Territories share the letter X). For Ontario and Quebec, this first character further identifies a particular part of the province: for example, G identifies Eastern Quebec, H Metropolitan Montréal, K Eastern Ontario and M Metropolitan Toronto (see map).

  • The second character is a numeral that identifies whether the area is urban or rural. A zero indicates a wide-area rural region, while all other digits indicate urban areas.

  • The third character is a letter that, in combination with the first two characters, identifies a more precise geographic district—a specific rural region, an entire medium-sized city or a section of a major metropolitan area.