You make this decision to buy a bear, and then what follows? You know? How do you train the bear? What do you bring as food when you’re going on… This is not a short trip. They travelled to Valcartier, Québec, where he trained with many of the Canadian soldiers before they shipped out across the Atlantic, and then he arrived in Salisbury Plain, in England, where he trained again with the Canadian Army for several months before they had to go to the front lines in December of 1914.

He named the bear Winnipeg, Winnie for short, in homage to his adopted Canadian city, and took Winnie on the train. And my great-grandfather, obviously loving animals, bought this little bear to be kind of a mascot for his regiment. While he was in White River, he stopped at a train station and there was a hunter there who had killed a bear, and he was selling the cub for $20. And he travelled from Winnipeg, through White River, to Valcartier, where he trained as part of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade. He emigrated from Britain to Canada when he was 18, loved animals, went to the Ontario Veterinary College to become a vet, and then, when the First World War broke out in 1914, he enlisted with a Winnipeg regiment, the Fort Garry Horse, and his responsibilities in the war were to look after the cavalry.

My great-grandfather Harry Colebourn was a veterinarian. I'm the vice president of strategy and creative at a Toronto shop called Narrative, and I'm also the author of a book that’s coming out this fall called Finding Winnie, which is about my family’s connection to Winnie-the-Pooh. Lindsay Mattick: My name is Lindsay Mattick, and my day job is in public relations. There, her good nature captivated the imagination of many visitors, including author A.A. But when his services with the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps were needed on the front, Colebourn brought Winnie to the London Zoo for safekeeping. He named her Winnie for his hometown ( Winnipeg), and cared for her in Valcartier, Québec, where the Canadian army organized its infantry brigades, before bringing her to Salisbury Plain, England, where Canadian soldiers trained for combat.

Mattick is a great-granddaughter of Lieutenant Harry Colebourn.Īs he shipped off to the First World War in 1914, Colebourn purchased a female black bear cub from a hunter in White River, Ontario.

In the summer of 2015, special projects editor Eli Yarhi interviewed Lindsay Mattick, a public-relations professional and the author behind the children’s book Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear (2015), for The Canadian Encyclopedia.

Finding Winnie by Lindsay Mattick