[Talk-ca] Canada Post addresses that do not match municipality name

Andrew MacKinnon andrewpmk at gmail.com
Sat Oct 20 17:53:27 GMT 2012


In the Greater Toronto Area, there are a number of places where a
municipality name is used in the Canada Post address where the
municipality name used in the address is not the same as the actual
municipality in which the address is located in. In many cases, these
are former municipalities that were amalgamated into one, and in some
cases are used to distinguish between duplicate street names.

Examples:

- Main Street Unionville - is addressed as "Main Street, Unionville
ON." This is in the former town of Unionville (near Kennedy/Highway 7
in Markham). Is "Main Street Unionville, Markham ON" also correct?
- Main Street Markham - I think this would be "Main Street, Markham
ON" (not 100% sure). This is in the former town of Markham in Markham,
Ontario. Further south this is known as Markham Road, and was prior to
1998 designated as Highway 48.
- Thornhill ON - refers to the area of Markham and Vaughan near Yonge
Street, south of Highway 407 (the only Canada Post city that refers to
2 municipalities that I know of).
- Scarborough ON - refers to the former municipality of Scarborough in
Toronto, Ontario.
- Etobicoke ON - refers to the former municipality of Etobicoke in
Toronto, Ontario.
- North York ON - refers to the former municipality of North York
- York ON - refers to the former municipality of York
- Weston ON - refers to the old town of Weston (near Lawrence/Weston
Rd), previously part of York, now part of Toronto, Ontario. There are
some duplicate street names e.g. King Street and Church Street which
are duplicates of the more well known names in downtown Toronto.
- East York ON - refers to the former municipality of East York
- Don Mills ON - refers to the Don Mills area, formerly part of North
York, now part of Toronto, Ontario
- Downsview ON - refers to the old town of Downsview, near Keele &
Wilson. 1201 Wilson Av, Downsview ON M3M 1J8 is the address for the
Ministry of Transportation. This was formerly part of North York
- Port Credit ON - I think Canada Post accepts this to refer to the
Port Credit area (near Lakeshore Rd/Hurontario) in Mississauga, I am
pretty sure that Mississauga ON is more commonly used though and is
valid
- Streetsville ON - ditto for the old town of Streetville, now part of
Mississauga
- Concord ON - the portion of Vaughan near the CN rail yard, mostly industrial
- Woodbridge ON - the western part of Vaughan, west of Highway 400
- Georgetown ON - part of Halton Hills
- Acton ON - part of Halton Hills
- Bradford ON - part of Bradford-West Gwillimbury
- Keswick ON - part of Georgina
- Holland Landing ON - part of East Gwillimbury

Any others I missed?

How do we represent these in OSM? Right now, the Nominatim search
engine tends to get confused when searching for many of these
addresses. Even many proprietary mapping solutions (e.g. Apple Maps)
seem to get screwed up when searching for addresses like "Church
Street, Weston ON".



More information about the Talk-ca mailing list