Letterhead Templates for Canadian Businesses

The corporate-name rule - and where British Columbia goes further

Under the federal Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA), s.10(5), a corporation must set out its name in legible characters on every contract, invoice, negotiable instrument, and order for goods or services it issues. That name has to include a legal element - 'Limited', 'Incorporated', 'Corporation', or the abbreviations 'Ltd.', 'Inc.', 'Corp.' - under s.10(1). Ontario's Business Corporations Act carries an almost identically worded rule at its own s.10(5).

British Columbia goes further than either. Under the BC Business Corporations Act, s.27(1), the company name has to appear specifically on business letters - not just invoices and contracts - along with notices, official publications, and orders for goods. And s.158 makes directors and officers who knowingly let that slip personally liable to anyone misled by the omission, a level of personal exposure the federal Act and Ontario's don't impose.

• Not required: your corporation number and registered-office address don't have to appear anywhere on the letter itself - a common assumption that isn't actually in the Act.
• If you're invoicing $100 or more, CRA's Input Tax Credit Information Regulations require your GST/HST registration number on the invoice too; past $500, add the recipient's name and payment terms.

Built for US Letter, not resized from A4

Canada's default business paper is US Letter, 8.5 x 11 in (215.9 x 279.4 mm), confirmed by a binding federal instrument: the Federal Courts Rules, Rule 65, which specifies documents 'measuring 21.5 cm by 28 cm (8 1/2 in. by 11 in.)' with no A4 alternative anywhere in the rule. A4 is about 6 mm narrower and 18 mm taller than Letter, so a letterhead designed for A4 and printed on Canadian Letter stock either clips at the bottom or leaves the margins visibly off-centre.

Every template here defaults to true Letter sizing, lines up with the Canadian #10 (S/L) business envelope Canada Post uses, and offers A4 only as a secondary export option for mail going abroad - never as the default.

Full block, spelled-out dates, and Canada Post's two address formats

The Government of Canada's Writing Tips Plus names full block - every line flush with the left margin, nothing indented - as the recommended style for Canadian business correspondence, and it's the default layout here. Dates are spelled out, as in 'January 9, 2026', because Canada is genuinely ambiguous with numeric dates: '01/09/26' reads as September 1 to someone used to the day-month order and January 9 to someone used to month-day order. Numeric dates like 2026-01-09 are meant for tables and forms, not the body of a letter.

Addresses change shape depending on where they sit, too. Inside the letter, Canada Post's own convention is mixed case with punctuation - 'Montreal, QC H3P 8A2'. On the envelope, it flips to uppercase with no punctuation at all - 'MONTREAL QC H3P 8A2' - with two spaces before the postal code either way. The templates render both forms correctly by default, which is a detail almost nothing else handles.

Faster than Canva, more Canadian than Word, and free

Canva ranks first in Canada for 'letterhead template' searches, but nothing can be edited without creating an account, and its templates and tools are heavily gated behind a paid tier once you've already invested time in a design. Microsoft's Word template gallery needs a Microsoft account too, and its letterhead templates are generic - built for a global audience, with no Canadian formatting built in. A local print shop like VistaPrint gets the paper size right (it says so directly: 8.5 x 11 in) but it only sells printed stock - there's no free download and no in-browser editor.

This gallery skips all three trade-offs: open a template, edit it in the browser, export a PDF or Word file. No account, no watermark, and it's sized to true US Letter from the first click.