author
James McIntyre
1827–1906
A Scottish-born Canadian poet with a wonderfully earnest streak, he became famous as the "Cheese Poet" for verses celebrating Ontario life and its dairy industry. His work is remembered as both sincere local boosterism and one of the quirkiest corners of Canadian literary history.
1 Audiobook
Poems of James McIntyre
by James McIntyre
About the author
After emigrating from Scotland to Upper Canada as a teenager, he settled in Ingersoll, Ontario, where he worked in practical trades including cabinet-making, furniture dealing, and undertaking. Alongside that everyday working life, he wrote poems about the people, places, and industries around him.
He is best known for cheerful, heartfelt verses about Oxford County's cheese-making trade, especially the poem often linked to the region's famous mammoth cheese. That unusual subject earned him the lasting nickname "the Cheese Poet," and it also made him memorable far beyond his local community.
Though some readers have enjoyed his poems for their unintended humor, his writing also offers a lively picture of 19th-century Canadian pride, small-town ambition, and local history. Today he remains an odd but appealing literary figure: a poet who found inspiration in ordinary work, hometown life, and even a very large wheel of cheese.