Winnie the Pooh Saga Over 100 Years Old

Harry Colebourne and the original Winnie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How many among us fondly recall the wonderful stories of  the “silly old bear,” Winnie the Pooh?  These stories were either read to us as children or we read them to our own children.  In the UK, Winnie the Pooh is the #1 fictional character among British children; in Canada, Winnie is the #2 favorite character, behind Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables.  Do you know where the inspiration for the beloved bear came from.  Here is an excerpt from the Manitoba edition of MSN Canada online.

One hundred years ago today a Canadian soldier adopted a black bear cub and named it after his adopted hometown of Winnipeg, launching the saga of Winnie the Pooh.

Lt. Harry Colebourn, a Canadian veterinarian and soldier with the Royal Canadian Army Veterinary Corps, came across the orphaned female bear cub on Aug. 24, 1914.

“It’s such a fascinating story to me that something from such a different, ancient time and far away is so directly connected to this city of ours,” said Mary Anne Appleby, a Winnipeg author who penned the 2011 biography Winnie the Bear.

As the story goes, when Colebourn’s troop train stopped in White River, Ont., he met a hunter who had shot and killed the bear cub’s mother, without whom the cub was almost certain to die.

Colebourn offered the hunter $20 for the cub, whom he named Winnipeg Bear to commemorate the city where he had lived before the war. The name was soon shortened to Winnie.

Winnie accompanied Colebourn to England, where the cub played with Canadian soldiers during their off-hours in their encampment on the Salisbury Plains.

Colebourn later donated Winnie to the London Zoo, where the bear inspired the creation of A.A. Milne‘s famous children’s book character. Winnie died at the zoo in 1934.  (To read more of this article, go to MSN Canada news for Manitoba.)

 

Original Winnie the Pooh stuffed toys. Clockwise from bottom left: Tigger, Kanga, Edward Bear (aka Winnie-the-Pooh), Eeyore, and Piglet. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

 

• Winnie the Pooh saga turns 100 years old today
• Photos from the real Winnie the Pooh’s 100th anniversary
• IWW, Winnie the Pooh.
• 100-year-old photographs of Winnipeg the original Winnie-the-Pooh
• Eunice does A Bear Named Winnie
• A Bear named Winnie
• Winnie the Pooh Origin Story Developing at RatPac
• This Day in History: August 21st