An Occurrence at Hundred Acre Wood: One Bear's Unbelievable Journey From Orphan to Literary Icon
“As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen” — “Winnie-the-Pooh”
Like its original source material written nearly a century ago, Disney’s new film “Christopher Robin” is pure and distinctive fantasy. It’s a gorgeously photographed, funny, earnest and quite memorable film about a middle aged man who forgets one crucial promise he made to a special friend decades earlier — a promise to never forget. And forget he would after the basic decree of life mercilessly pulled him up and out of his childhood bootstraps years earlier to become an upstanding citizen of mediocrity in a world that took no pity or prisoners. But despite the ageless narrative trope of absentee parents in literature and film, the fascination of “Christopher Robin” and so many other films and stories within the “Winnie-the-Pooh” universe exists not in its content, but within its indelible characters who have charmed and enchanted us for generations.
Yes, we know the story of young Christopher Robin. The imaginative little boy and his (mis)adventures running rampant across the enchanting English landscape of Hundred Acre Wood with his wily gang of anthropomorphic stuffed animals, taking pleasure in gentle philosophical musings and other simple things in life. As with any child who grew up with “Winnie-the-Pooh” stories, the idea there was perhaps some magical alchemy at work bringing Christopher Robin into Pooh Bear’s melancholic forest of tranquility had become quite real; a portal of sorts that exists solely within the boundless imagination of a pre-teen dreamer. Hundred Acre Wood had become a sanctuary of whimsy and wonder far out of reach from the disarray and turmoils of the real world.
But for every story told, there is a beginning. And for “Winnie-the-Pooh,” the beginning is a fascinating story that begins with a young Canadian soldier’s journey to war in 1914.
En route to a training camp in Valcartier, Quebec on August 24, 1914, the train carrying 27-year-old Lieutenant Harry Colebourn and fellow soldiers stopped into the small lumber town of White River, Ontario. Stepping onto the station platform, something out of place immediately caught Colebourn’s eye — a black bear cub, no more than age seven months, at the end of a leash held by a trapper who had killed its mother, seeking a monetary offer for his find. In young Colebourn, a lifelong animal lover, the trapper found the perfect buyer.
Born and raised in Birmingham, England, Harry D. Colebourn emigrated to Canada at age eighteen to study veterinary surgery at Ontario Veterinary College. Upon graduation, he headed west to the province of Manitoba, settling into the rapidly growing prairie town of Winnipeg and securing a position with the Department of Agriculture. At the outbreak of war in Europe, Colebourn, now a veterinary officer with the Fort Garry Horse cavalry regiment, enlisted for active duty in France.
On that train platform, a bond was immediately forged. The young cavalry veterinarian purchased the bear cub for 20 Canadian dollars and, together, they returned to the train. Upon introducing the orphaned cub to the other soldiers, he named her “Winnipeg,” paying affectionate homage to his adopted hometown — soon shortened to “Winnie” within the ranks of the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Valcartier.
Winnie became a familiar presence around the training camps at Valcartier, particularly as a doting companion to Colebourn, who rewarded her a with tasty diet of fruits and vegetables, fish, beans, potatoes, bread and, for dessert, a mixture of condensed milk and corn syrup. Ever the loyal companion, Winnie followed Colebourn around like a dutiful puppy and could often be found sleeping under his cot.
Known for climbing tent poles and wreaking playful havoc around camp, Winnie often posed for photographs with the fellow soldiers, quickly earning her rank as regimental mascot. In October 1914, she joined her compatriots on the military transport S.S. Manitou as they set sail across the Atlantic Ocean for additional training in the remote English coastal region of Salisbury Plain.
After seven weeks of training, Colebourn was ordered to the Western Front to serve alongside other members of the Royal Canadian Army Veterinary Corps as front line surgeons treating sick and wounded horses, then a vital battlefield resource. The perilous trenches of France offered little safe haven for the fighting soldier, let alone a tame, gradually domesticated black bear. To ensure her safety for the remainder of the war, Colebourn arranged a temporary home for Winnie at the London Zoo where an extensive mountainous bear habitat had been opened. And it was there, on December 9, 1914, Winnie first ambled into her new home. Constantly in his thoughts, Colebourn visited her, now a fully grown adult bear, in London each time he was able to take leave from the front lines.
London at once fell in love with Winnie, especially children who could safely enter the bear pit to play with their local friendly bear, feeding her out of their tiny hands and going for bear back rides. She was, according to Zookeeper Ernest Sceales, “the tamest and best behaved bear we have ever had at the zoo.” By the end of the war in November 1918, a greatly saddened Harry Colebourn knew he had to break his promise to bring Winnie back to Canada with him. She was no longer merely his pet, his best friend, but now belonged to the citizens of London who loved her as much as he did. Visiting Winnie to say his final good-bye, Colebourn journeyed back home disheartened, yet comforted knowing she was happy, loved and in the best of care.
While Colebourn returned to the Department of Agriculture and established a veterinary practice out of his home, children and adults of London continued to be enamored with Winnie. One child in particular had become especially smitten — a young boy named Christopher Robin Milne, who regularly pleaded with his father, British writer Alan Alexander (A.A.) Milne, to take him to the zoo so he could play with Winnie. So fond of Winnie was Christopher Robin, he changed the name of the beloved teddy bear he received from his father on his first birthday from Edward to Winnie the Pooh, a combination of the black bear at the London Zoo he so loved and a ornery swan on the Milne property he would feed every morning.
Inspired not only by Christopher Robin’s affection for this loving bear and its influence on his son’s winsome imagination, other factors served Milne’s incentives for creating one of literature’s most endearing and iconic creations.
A.A. Milne suffered his own horrific war experiences having served with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment at the Battle of the Somme, a near-five month offensive fought between July and November 1916 that slaughtered nearly 20,000 British soldiers on its first day of fighting, then an average of 10,000 more each day thereafter. Suffering trench fever and shell shock from his abominably daunting experiences on the Western Front, visions of death and destruction haunted Milne for the remainder of his life. Years after his return home, illusions of charred, mangled corpses and severed limbs in the fallen leaves continued to invade his traumatized psyche during his walks through Ashdown Forest, the tranquil picturesque landscape near his home in East Essex, just south of London. Ashdown famously serve as inspiration for Hundred Acre Wood in his forthcoming literary creation.
Milne’s prolific line of work as a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and magazine contributor certainly demonstrated his natural talents as a writer. But it was Christopher Robin’s collection of assorted stuffed animals in his nursery like Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo and Tigger that served as a distinct influence on his most famous writings. Much of the influence behind A.A. Milne’s enchanting “Winnie-the-Pooh”-related works could be connected to his war experiences in such a way that they were developed from the pastoral rehabilitation of his country retreat and its surrounding vistas. The fun-loving fuzzy characters and their adventure stories were written as a remedial treatment of sorts that ensconced innocence and childlike purity amidst whimsically placid surroundings, replacing the nightmarish locales like the blasted landscapes of No Man’s Land during The Somme Offensive.
The fact that Milne and illustrator E.H. Shepard, a veteran of WWI with the Royal Garrison Artillery, were able to cast aside the appalling visions of warfare and place optimism and childlike delight in its place within the hallowed acreage of Hundred Acre Wood is the most enduring form of survival. Unlike writers of the 1920’s like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway who assaulted their demons with far more personal and serious accounts of their war experiences, Milne’s approach was far different. He brought his most iconic character, “Winnie-the-Pooh,” to life in his 1924 collection of children’s poetry “When We Were Very Young,” its sequel of stories, “Winnie-the-Pooh” in 1926 and “The House at Pooh Corner” in 1928 at a time when Europe was still rebuilding itself. Milne’s creations served as a post-war antidote that went beyond the carnage and straight into the nostalgia-starved populace still in the process of reconstructing the stability, innocence and solace they sought to reclaim.
The immense popularity of A.A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood inhabitants continued to pervade the hearts and imaginations of generations for a over a century, not only with the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories, but also through the likes of toys, games, puzzles, radio shows, RCA Victor recordings and other bestselling merchandise. More recent licensed endeavors from Walt Disney Studios, who acquired lasting copyrights to “Winnie-the-Pooh” in 1961, produced a steady stream of classic cartoons and films like 2017’s “Goodbye Christopher Robin” and this summer’s family gem “Christopher Robin.” Disney continues to hold their rights to “Winnie-the-Pooh” through 2026.
But it was A.A. Milne’s delightful creation that made a young orphaned bear cub called Winnie a global phenomenon, a beloved attraction children and adults of London couldn’t get enough of during a time of war and beyond. She had become a treasured icon, an emblem of affection, friendship, unity and reconciliation amidst the insanity of war and its lasting devastations. She was exactly what London needed.
Sadly, Winnie would pass away in 1934 at the age of 20, her death making headlines around the world.
A.A. Milne would for decades deny that the character of Christopher Robin was based on his son, a claim Christopher Robin Milne himself corroborated most of his life. But whether the real Christopher Robin is or isn’t the inspiration really has no lasting matter within the literary domain of his father’s most famous legacy. Readers never saw this distinction, instead solely recognizing in Milne’s writings a fantastic friendship between a boy and the silly ol’ bear who inspired him with wise and everlasting foresight in living a full and blessed life. As Milne wrote in 1928’s “The House at Pooh Corner,” “…in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing.”
And nearly a century later, that same little boy and his bear are still wreaking playful havoc through Hundred Acre Wood within the pages of Milne’s books and the imaginations of millions of children, teaching them that friendship truly is one of life’s greatest gifts.
