One hundred years ago today, the beloved children’s literature character Winnie-the-Pooh first graced bookshelves in A.A. Milne’s collection of stories, but the stories might have never existed if it weren’t for a World War One Canadian soldier and his pet bear.
In 1914, Harry Colebourn, a volunteer soldier in the Canadian Armed Veterinary Corps, made an unusual purchase on his way to training. Colebourn purchased an orphaned female bear for $20, naming her Winnie after his hometown of Winnipeg.
Colebourn’s great-granddaughter, Lindsay Mattick, said he “loved animals” and has now written a book about him.
“My great-grandfather bought the cub to be a mascot for his regiment of the army. And he named the bear Winnipeg, Winnie for short, so that this bear would be kind of a source of joy, a friend to his fellow soldiers,” Mattick said.
Before Colebourn deployed to the front lines in France, he took Winnie to the London Zoo. Winnie thrived at the zoo where she was known for her friendly demeanor, with the zoo even allowing children to play with her, including Christopher Robin, Milne’s son and the other half of the famous literary friendship. Christopher even named his own teddy bear Winnie, sparking the idea for Milne’s stories.
Credit: russell102 – stock.adobe.comFollowing the war, Colebourn returned to London to bring Winnie home to Canada, but her popularity at the zoo made him change his mind. Winnie was a resident of the London Zoo until 1934, when she passed away aged 20.
The actual Pooh, a 20-inch Farnell teddy bear purchased at Harrods in 1921 for Christopher’s first birthday, now lives alongside his friends at the New York Public Library, where he has resided since the 1980s. Milne, with the adult Christopher’s blessing, gave the collection of stuffed toys to his U.S. publisher for a publicity tour in 1947. The publisher donated them to the library 40 years later. The toys are displayed as part of the library’s vast “Treasures” collection, alongside Charles Dickens’s desk, a first-edition Plato and a Shakespeare First Folio.
In honor of its centennial birthday, the library is displaying mockups of A.A. Milne’s text alongside E.H. Shepard’s famous illustrations, some notable translations of the Pooh stories from around the world, and, for the first time on public display, the new Roo toy gifted to the Library in 2026 by Her Majesty Queen Camilla of the United Kingdom to replace the original, which was lost in an orchard in England in the 1930s.
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