Who would
imagine that the origin of Winnie the Pooh goes back to Winnipeg, Canada
and World War I? Some troops from Winnipeg, Canada were being
transported to eastern Canada, in route to join the 2nd Canadian
Infantry Brigade stationed in Europe. At a train stop in White River,
Ontario, a lieutenant named Harry Colebourn purchased a female bear cub
for $20 from a hunter who had killed its mother. The lieutenant named
the cub “Winnipeg”, after his hometown city of Winnipeg, and
nicknamed it “Winnie” for short.
The troops took Winnie with them to Britain where Winnie became the
mascot of the Brigade. When the Brigade was redirected to battlefields
in France, the lieutenant, who had been promoted to captain, decided to
loan Winnie to the London Zoo. From December 1919, until Winnie died in
1934, Winnie lived as a popular attraction at the London Zoo.
Along comes a boy named Christopher Robin who was a frequent visitor of
the zoo. His favorite animal at the zoo was of course… Winnie!
Christopher Robin liked Winnie so much that he named his own stuffed
bear “Winnie the Pooh”. It just so happened that Christopher Robin
was the son of author A.A. Milne.
You can see where this is going … A.A. Milne was inspired by his
son’s fascination with Winnie and wrote a series of books about Winnie
the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh, as well as several other stuffed animals
Christopher Robin actually played with (Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga
and Roo), became the other main characters in Milne’s books. The
adventures of Winnie the Pooh and his friends took place in the
100-Acre-Wood, an area modeled after Milne’s country home in Ashdown
Forest, Sussex.
The first three Pooh books were published by Methuen. The first,
“Winnie the Pooh”, was published in 1926. Soon to follow were the
verses “Now We Are Six” in 1927, and “The House at Pooh Corner”
in 1928. The books were illustrated by a very talented artist, E.H.
Shepard. By 1996, it is estimated that Methuen published over 20 million
copies. Over the years, these Pooh books have become so popular
worldwide that they have even been printed in more than 25 languages.
Here’s where Disney steps in… Walt Disney’s daughters also fell in
love with the Pooh books, and in 1966, Disney decided to bring Pooh to
film. In 1977, Disney released the first feature length animated film of
Pooh, “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh”. By 1993, Pooh was
second only to Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney Company’s portfolio of the
most popular Disney characters. After the second release of “The Many
Adventures of Winnie the Pooh”, Pooh took over as the most popular
Disney character.
Other interesting trivia about Winnie the Pooh:
 | Winnie
the Pooh’s favorite things to do are: play Poohsticks, go on
adventures with Piglet or Christopher Robin, hum, think up poems and
songs, find “hunny”, visit friends who have “hunny” and
morning exercises.
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| Winnie
the Pooh’s favorite sayings are “Oh bother”, and “think,
think, think”.
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| It
has been suggested that Winnie the Pooh’s birthday is August 21,
1921, since Christopher Robin Milne was given the original stuffed
bear on that date.
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| Disney
first bought rights to Winnie-The-Pooh in 1961. In 1998, the Garrick
Club sold Disney the rights to all of A. A. Milne's characters until
the copyright expires in 2026. On March 4, 2001, the Sunday Times of
London reported that Disney paid an estimated $340-to-$350 million
for the rights to the royalty stream, as well as for future use of
the characters in any media, from the A. A. Milne Trust.
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| In
1966, Winnie-the-Pooh appeared animated for the first time in Walt
Disney's
"Winnie-the-Pooh and the Honey Tree".
|
| Winnie
the Pooh appeared on a commemorative stamp in 1979 celebrating
Ernest Shepard’s centenary year.
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| Christopher
Milne unveiled a life size bronze statue of Winnie the Pooh at the
London Zoo in 1981. The statue, made by sculptor Lorne McKean, was
commissioned to celebrate both Winnie (the actual bear) and
Winnie-the-Pooh.
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| In
1999, a party of officers and men from the Canadian military
presented to the London Zoo a bronze sculpture of Officer Harry
Colebourn and Winnie created by Bill Epp. A copy of this statue also
stands in the Winnepeg Zoo.
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| A.A.
Milne’s son, Christopher Milne, recruited Winnie the Pooh to save
100-Acre Wood, also known as Pooh Forest, from a proposed
exploration by British Petroleum for “progress and development”.
The campaign was successful and 100-Acre Wood was saved for
posterity.
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| The
original Winnie the Pooh and Friends (stuffed animals) are on
display in the Central Children’s Room at the Donnell Library
Center, part of the New York Public Library. Roo is not part of the
collection because he was lost in the apple orchards in the early
1930s. Over three-quarters of a million people annually visit the
original stuffed Winnie the Pooh.
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A biography of
Winnie the Pooh, titled “The Brillant Career of Winnie the Pooh”,
was written by Ann Thwaite, and published by Methuen in Europe and by
Dutton in America. |
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