10/15/2026
🇨🇦 Canada supplied the bear. An Englishman wrote the book. The world fell in love.
One hundred years ago today, British author A. A. Milne published the first collection of Winnie-the-Pooh stories.
But the world’s most famous fictional bear has a distinctly Canadian origin story.
In 1914, Canadian Army veterinarian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn bought a young black bear while travelling through White River, Ontario. He named her Winnipeg, after his hometown.
Soon, everyone simply called her Winnie.
When Colebourn’s military unit headed to France during the First World War, Winnie was left at the London Zoo. There, she became a favourite of a little boy named Christopher Robin Milne.
Christopher Robin loved the bear so much that he renamed his own teddy bear Winnie—providing the inspiration for the character his father would soon make famous around the world.
So yes, the author was British.
But Winnie was Canadian before Pooh ever found the Hundred Acre Wood. 🇨🇦
