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

[Andrew MacKinnon]

OK I've figured it out.

In the City of Toronto, there are numerous duplicate street names
caused by amalgamation. See
<http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/ontroads/message/9826>. If
there is a duplicate street name, you must use the name of the former
municipality in the address e.g. York, East York, Etobicoke,
Scarborough, North York. If it is not a duplicate, either "Toronto" or
the name of the former municipality are acceptable. Various other city
names like Downsview, Don Mills and Weston are acceptable for certain
areas of these former municipalities, these are generally just aliases
for the old municipality name (though Downsview for instance is only
accepted for the portion of North York near the community of
Downsview, using "Downsview" for an address at Yonge/Sheppard is
incorrect).

In Markham, there is the weird situation of "Main Street Unionville"
and "Main Street Markham".

In other parts of the GTA, sometimes the city name used by the post
office doesn't match the actual city's name, but I can't find any
other examples of duplicate street names other than the one in
Markham. If an address is "Woodbridge" or "Concord" we can pretend it
is in Vaughan.

Since the Canada Post database is proprietary I have had to figure
this out from sources like receipts from coffee shops and fast food
restaurants. Fortunately these are easy to get.

Is a free source available for the boundaries of Old Toronto, North
York, York and East York as they existed before 1998? I have added the
boundaries of Scarborough and Etobicoke as boundary=administrative,
admin_level=10 which seems to make nominatim work propertly (though it
says that the addresses are in Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
instead of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada which is not the correct
format).