Bear of very little brain gets Canadian book treatment
Before there was Pooh, Tigger or Eeyore, there was a real bear cub and a helpful veterinarian pal, who were both from Canada.
The new children’s book Finding Winnie, which is being eyed for a film adaptation, tells the real Canadian story that inspired A.A. Milne’s classic Winnie-thePooh tales.
The author is Toronto-based Lindsay Mattick, whose great-grandfather was that very vet, Harry Colebourn of Winnipeg. “I want people who love Winnie-thePooh to understand that the real story behind her is just as beautiful and just as amazing,” said Mattick, who has already sold the big-screen rights to the newly published book.
“I’m still blown away that, while a lot of people in Canada certainly know the story and know the history now, around the world it’s really still not known.
“People don’t even realize that there was a real bear.”
Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bearis told through a bedtime story session between a mother and her young son, Cole.
Cole is inspired by Mattick’s real-life son, who has the same name.
As the mother tells Cole in the book, Colebourn was sent away from Winnipeg in 1914 to tend to soldiers’ horses overseas.
During a stop on a train platform in White River, Ont., he met a man sitting with a gentle black bear cub and gave him $20 for it, thinking he could take good care of it along his journeys.
Colebourn and the soldiers bonded with and trained the cub, which he called Winnipeg (Winnie). She even became the mascot of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade.
But Colebourn realized he eventually had to give her up, so he brought her to the London Zoo, where he later checked in on her to ensure she was well cared for.
That’s where a young boy named Christopher Robin Milne grew to love her — a bond that eventually inspired his dad, Alan Alexander Milne, to write Winniethe-Pooh.
Sophie Blackall illustrates the book, which includes archival photos.
“There are two main emotional takeaways from the book: one is the dedication, which is this idea that you never know the impact that one small loving gesture can have,” said Mattick.
The other take-away is “sometimes to let one new story begin, another one needs to end,” she added.
“I think that that’s a life lesson that we all have to learn along the way. It’s like, you go through life and one chapter closes and another one opens and this story was very much that.”
Mattick, who runs a public relations firm, said she’d been wanting to write about this story since she got out of journalism school more than 10 years ago.
She got the motivation when she found out she was pregnant with Cole, who is named after his great-great-grandfather, who died in 1947.
She’s read the story to the now-3-yearold a couple of times, but he’s still too young to understand it, she says.
“I think he thinks he’s related to a bear.”