Montreal artist Linda Liao is quietly designing the postage stamps on your mail

Linda Liao draws at her apartment in La Petite-Patrie, but her art reaches thousands of Montrealers every day—stamped onto their mail.

The 39-year-old artist, originally from Taiwan, has been designing custom postmark cachets (the decorative stamps that mark used postage) for Montreal post offices, working entirely as a volunteer. If your letter passes through the branch at Sainte-Catherine and Papineau, it might arrive bearing a heart-shaped design celebrating the Village. Other designs she's created include a carousel from La Ronde and the REM transit line, both commissioned by downtown post offices.

Postmark cachets have traditionally been functional—just a date and bilingual "Canada Post" text. But some Quebec offices have begun offering illustrated, commemorative versions that collectors prize. Across the province, 45 decorated cachets are now in active use, ranging from Mont-Royal to the Jacques-Cartier Bridge to the Biodôme in Laval.

Liao began the work almost casually. A regular letter-writer and postcard sender, she'd become a familiar face at the Place-d'Armes post office. When staff learned she was an artist—someone who also practices photography, calligraphy, and origami—they invited her to design something. Now she sketches freehand on a drawing tablet, then sends the digital files to Canada Post's head office with detailed instructions.

Her most recent design, for a Rosemont post office, depicts the city's Botanical Garden layered with seasons: the Japanese garden, trees, a waterfall, roses for Rosemont, a fountain, and a ladybug for the Insectarium—capturing autumn, winter, spring, and summer in a single frame.

It's the kind of hyperlocal creative work that shapes a city's small moments—the ones people barely notice until they see them again on an envelope.