WWI Animals: Winnie the Pooh

Who would have guessed that A.A. Milne‘s famous Winnie the Pooh was the result of World War I?

Oh, I know you think he sprang fully to life from the Hundred Acre Woods, but in actuality Winnie (who became the Pooh) was born in Canada.

She was female, and the pet of Lieutenant Harry Colebourn of the Canadian Royal Army Veterinary Corps.

Colebourn originally purchased the young black bear cub for $20 from a hunter (who had killed her mother) in White River, Ontario while he was on his way to army training camp during World War I. Colebourn, a veterinarian, named her after Winnipeg, his adopted hometown.

Crossing the Atlantic

Colebourn took the young bear with him across the Atlantic in 1914 as he traveled with the Fort Garry Horse regiment to the Salisbury Plain west of London.

Winnie quickly became the unofficial mascot of the regiment.

Considered tame,  the soldiers loved Winnie who  followed them around camp like a pet dog.

In December 1914, Colebourn’s superior officers ordered him to make other arrangements for his pet bear as the regiment soon would leave for France.

The London Zoo

He asked the London Zoo to keep her for him, and they obliged. He fully intended to take her back to Canada with him at war’s end.

Winnie’s winning demeanor followed her to London as a history of the Fort Garry Horse regiment explains:

Winnie became a feature attraction for the many thousands of visitors and especially young children.

She was considered to be completely trustworthy by her bear keepers who said that of all the bears they had in the Zoo, Winnie was the only one they could say this about.

She was also the tamest and best behaved bear that the Zoo ever had.

Colebourn spent most of the war not far from the front lines as a vet to the all-important horses. He returned to the London Zoo in 1919 to collect his bear before returning to Canada.

When he saw how well she had been cared for and how beloved Winnie had become, he decided to donate her to the zoo as an expression of his gratitude.

Home after the war

Sometime after the war, the A. A. Milne family visited the London Zoo and young Christopher fell in love with the “silly old black bear.”

When he returned home, he named his teddy bear Winnie the Pooh after her.

The stuffed teddy bear became Christopher’s father’s inspiration for the fictional character in his books Winnie-the-Pooh (first published in 1926) and the sequel The House at Pooh Corner (published in 1928).

Pooh-bear

Winnie the Pooh is called “Pooh” or “Pooh-bear.” Milne explained why in the first chapter of Winnie the Pooh. Winnie’s

arms were so stiff … they stayed up straight in the air for more than a week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it off. And I think – but I am not sure – that that is why he is always called Pooh.

As for the real bear herself,  Winnie stayed at the zoo until she died in 1934, popular to the end of her life

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