General News

Local poet Winston Uytenbogaart reflects on his creative process

January 9, 2026   ·   0 Comments

Written By CONSTANCE SCRAFIELD

Sproule’s Emporium on Broadway has sold Winston Uytenbogaart’s poetry and children’s books for many years. Writing poetry has been a mainstay of Uytenbogaart’s life since he began as a teenager.

Living in Orangeville, Uytenbogaart is a man who has worked in a number of businesses, including work that saw him living in New York for 12 years.

He has taken his poetry as one-man shows at the Orangeville Public Library and other venues. Children’s Books, too, he writes for fun. Uytenbogaart sells his poetry books in a number of stores and publications.

While at university, he was a vet’s assistant and wrote a children’s book about pets. It is based on a true story.

“We had a had a pet parade in the library, where I was living and I had decided every child would win a ribbon,” he said. By separating the animals into categories, every child got a ribbon, except for one little girl who had a rabbit.

“We ran out of ribbons,” he grieved, but the librarian found a ribbon, and he was able to present it to the girl for the Best Behaved Animal in the show. Smiles all round.

“Dad used to tell stories: he came to Canada in the ‘20s. He sailed on sailing ships,” he added.

Uytenbogaart worked in cities and small towns as a land use planner. Six municipalities in Essex County were his clients for 10 years, including Amherstburg. Essex County had to hire a land use planner to write its Official Plans and zoning bylaws. Between 1974 and 1980, Ontario began insisting on them.

He related, “I wrote Essex County’s first official plan. I worked for Pelee Island briefly and did their official plan too.”

He lived for 10 years in Windsor.

In 1982, Uytenbogaart was transferred to New York to continue working for the company Kleinfeldt for 12 years.

The last seven years, though, he had his own business, a construction project management company. His job put him in charge of moving the entire project for, as an example, an international bank, to set up everything they needed, or when they were moving from one building to another. 

“Everything had to be moved up and down the many levels of the big New York buildings, and I worked in all of the big buildings over that time,” he commented. “One year, we had a blackout in New York, and I had to do the job anyway.”

As his wife was not always with him in New York, alone Uytenbogaart wrote a lot of poetry. Then, he and his wife came back to Canada.

He affirmed, “We are Canadians and really appreciate all that is good here. I was born in Canada. Living in New York was interesting but we didn’t want to stay there.”

With an architectural background, he defined the meaning of “heritage.”

In Essex, they were very active in preserving the community. Yet, he instructed people at the time, “Heritage is not just about the buildings, it is an atmosphere, how people interact; it’s a feeling.”

Up in the Bruce Peninsula, they have 200 acres, working with foresters, and are known for tending the forest well. Along with their neighbours, they are doing things the right way. Uytenbogaart writes poetry there, too.

Most artists have an “Aha!” moment in their lives. Uytenbogaart experienced his at a pub in New York.

He met a man, an actor, and told him, “I am a poet.” The man said he was too and asked Uytenbogaart to show him some of his poems, which Uytenbogaart was able to do.

The man looked at a couple, chose one, and read it to the pub’s patrons, but he was also British, which gave additional cadence to the poetry. As he finished reading it, the listeners clapped and clapped and demanded another and others.

The moment told the poet, “I realized I had something, to keep writing and learned I could connect with people.”

Here’s a poem from last Christmas:

THE NIGHT BEFORE

The evening is upon us,

It’s clear and bright.

I cut the tree again this year,

From just out back beyond the barn.

Replanted in the den,

It sits majestic, all decked out,

With stuff we hold dear.

Sitting upon the couch,

Our feet cozy in woollies,

A glass in hand,

We share some dreams.

The young ones watch for Santa,

All cheery and bright.

Now soon to our bed,

Looking forward with joy,

To Sunny days and good cheer;

with praise for little things

–Winston Uytenbogaart (Dec 14, 2025)

Readers Comments (0)