During the first World War, troops from Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada)
were being transported to eastern Canada, on their way to Europe,
where they were to join the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade. When the
train stopped at White River, Ontario, a lieutenant called Harry
Colebourn bought a small female black bear cub for $20 from a
hunter who had killed its mother. He named her 'Winnipeg', after
his hometown of Winnipeg, or 'Winnie' for short.
Winnie became the mascot of the Brigade and went to Britain with
the unit. When the Brigade was posted to the battlefields of
France, Colebourn, now a Captain, took Winnie to the London Zoo for
a long loan. He formally presented the London Zoo with Winnie in
December 1919 where he became a popular attraction and lived until
1934.
The bear was also very popular with Christopher Robin, son of
author A.A. Milne. It was his favourite animal at the Zoo, and he
often spent time inside the cage with it. The bear was Christopher
Robin's inspiration for calling his own teddy bear
Winnie.....Winnie the Pooh (this teddy bear started out with the
name of Edward Bear). The name Pooh originally belonged to a swan,
as can be seen in the introduction of Milne's 'When We Were Very
Young'.
A.A. Milne started to write a series of books about Winnie the
Pooh, his son Christopher Robin, and their friends in the
100-Acre-Wood. These other characters, such as Eeyore, Piglet,
Tigger, Kanga and Roo were also based on stuffed animals belonging
to Christopher Robin. The characters, Rabbit and Owl, were based on
animals that lived, like the swan Pooh, in the surrounding area of
Milne's country home, Cotchford Farm in Ashdown Forest, Sussex. It
is this area on which the 100-Acre-Wood was based.
'Winnie-the-Pooh' was published by Methuen on October 14th, 1926,
the verses 'Now We are Six' in 1927, and 'The House at Pooh Corner'
in1928. All these books were illustrated in a beautiful way by E.H.
Shepard, which made the books even more magical. The Pooh-books
became firm favorites with old and young alike and have been
translated into almost every known language. A conservative figure
for the total sales of the four Methuen editions (including When We
Were Very Young) up to the end of 1996 would be over 20 million
copies. These figures do not include sales of the four books
published by Dutton in Canada and the States, nor the
foreign-language editions printed in more than 25 languages the
world over!
The Pooh-books had also been favourites of Walt Disney's daughters
and it inspired Disney to bring Pooh to film in 1966. In 1977 'the
Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh', the first feature-length
animated film of Pooh was released. In 1993, the Walt Disney
Company acknowledged that Pooh Bear is second only to Mickey Mouse
in their portfolio of the most-loved and trusted characters known
to millions of people all over the world. By 1996, after the second
release of 'the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh', the Bear of
Very Little Brain had proven to be more popular than any other
Disney character. In 1997, twenty years after the release of the
first feature-length animated film, Disney released 'Pooh's Grand
Adventure', picking up where Disney's 22nd Masterpiece left off. In
February 2000 Disney released the third Winnie the Pooh movie
called 'The Tigger Movie', this time with the leading part for
Tigger.
