Winnie The Pooh History

WINNIE THE POOH HISTORY
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.
  • Winnie the Pooh’s favorite sayings are “Oh bother”, and “think, think, think”.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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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