If your mail passes through certain Montreal post offices, it may arrive wearing a small drawing of mine. I design cachets d’oblitération — the pictorial cancellations a post office presses over your postage to cancel it — as a volunteer, for several branches of the city. Most cancellations are generic, showing only the date and the bilingual ‘Postes Canada’ mention; a pictorial cancel turns that everyday mark into a keepsake that collectors seek out.

The Designs

Among my designs so far: a heart framing the Village for the branch at Sainte-Catherine and Papineau with the Village, the REM light-rail and a La Ronde with fireworks for two downtown branches, and — most recently — the Montreal Botanical Garden for a branch in Rosemont: the Japanese garden, trees with fallen leaves, a little waterfall, the rose for Rosemont, and a ladybug for the Insectarium, turning clockwise through autumn, winter, spring and summer in a single ring.

Of the five cachets I have designed, four are already in circulation. My current mandate is to replace an expired cachet on the theme of Formula 1, and I have sent proposals to more post offices across the country.

How a Pictorial Cancel Is Made

Each design is drawn freehand on a drawing tablet. The finished digital artwork then travels, with instructions through the post office’s postmaster / leadhead, to Canada Post headquarters, which adapts it and manufactures the rubber stamp. Finally, the cancel device is delivered to the branch that requested it — where it waits for your envelope.

In the Press

In July 2026, Le Devoir published a portrait of this work, calling the heart-shaped cachet « la marque d’une artiste philatéliste ». Read the article: Quand l’art s’invite dans votre boîte aux lettres, by Roxane Léouzon (Le Devoir, 22 July 2026).