WINNIE-THE-POOH AT WAR
Book details bear’s military service
The story of Winnie-the-Pooh’s origins is not a new one. It has been told in various forms over the years — including as a picture book by Lindsay Mattick, which earned its illustrator, Sophie Blackall, the 2016 Caldecott Medal — and has endeared itself to Canadians because the beloved teddy bear in A.A. Milne’s British classic was inspired by a real, live bear born in the Ontario woods.
Mattick, who lives in Toronto, is the great-granddaughter of Capt. Harry Colebourn, a veterinarian from Winnipeg who, as a lieutenant with the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade, bought a bear cub from a trapper he met at the train station in White River, Ont., en route to his training in Valcartier, Que., and deployment overseas to fight in the First World War. Colebourn named the cub Winnie, short for Winnipeg, and introduced her to his colleagues in the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps as their mascot.
Finding Winnie, published in 2015 as a picture book for ages four to seven, quickly found fans of all ages, not just because of the bear’s story but also thanks to the strikingly beautiful colour art by Brooklyn’s Sophie Blackall. This year’s volume, aimed at middlegrade readers old enough to read the book by themselves, takes the basic true story and expands it in such a way that we get a more rounded view of the orphaned cub and the remarkable twist her life took when Colbourne entered it. Mattick and co-author Josh Greenhut have taken poetic licence in describing the cub’s origins (and her mother’s death at the trapper’s hands), but the result is a riveting story that goes even further than Finding Winnie did. Luckily, in one respect it remains the same: Black-andwhite illustrations throughout the book are done by the same artist who put her mark on Finding Winnie.
Winnie’s Great War features “all-new art,” Blackall assured me. “It was a very quick turnaround because it’s a single colour for the interiors,” she said. “I worked in pencil, which I haven’t done for years. It was so much fun.” Normally, Blackall said, “I make almost all my illustrations with Chinese ink and then paint watercolour washes over the top. But for Winnie’s Great War I used an HB pencil. Lots of tiny marks, lots and lots of pencil sharpening …”
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the end of what came to be called the Great War, so it seems fitting that Mattick would have chosen to honour her great-grandfather’s service — and that of his young bear — with a volume aimed at older readers. Her new book is dedicated to her five-year-old son, Cole, named for Harry Colebourne, and his sister, Claudia. And just as she did in the picture book, she uses Cole’s voice throughout the book to provide a contemporary touchstone and put history in perspective for youngsters who can only imagine what it might have been like for a small bear to keep up the spirits of young servicemen heading to war and then to join them in a two-week journey by ship across the Atlantic. Ultimately, Colebourne chose not to endanger Winnie by taking her into battle. In England, he donated the cub to the London Zoo, where it became a favourite of, among many others, a boy named Christopher Robin, whose father, A. A. Milne, immortalized her in fictionalized books about a teddy bear named Winnie-the-Pooh, illustrated by E. H. Shepard.
The real Winnie made it safely through the war (as did Capt. Colebourne, who opened a veterinary clinic in Winnipeg upon his return), entertaining countless children (and adults) during her more than 20 years at the London Zoo. Mattick and Greenhut, in this expanded version of the cub’s story, have managed to create a text that is readable not only for middle-grade children but for anyone who has ever owned a teddy bear or shown a fondness for the real thing. And speaking of real, photos from Mattick’s family archives (including excerpts from Colebourne’s 1914 diary) complement Blackall’s drawings perfectly. All in all, this is a book well worth reading.