The True Winnie-the-Pooh

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

History, Society & Culture

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

August 24, 1914. A train pulls up to the lumber town of White River, Ontario, carrying a regiment of Canadian troops on board. On the tracks where they disembark is a small black bear cub. An army veterinarian decides to buy the bear and name her Winnipeg—Winnie for short—after the town where he's been living.

When the soldiers are deployed to the European front, Winnie is left at the London Zoo, where a child named Christopher Robin Milne will meet her. He'll later rename his own teddy bear after her: Winnie-the-Pooh.

How did a real-life boy and a real-life bear inspire some of the world's most famous literary characters? And what impact did these stories ultimately have on the people who helped bring them to life?

Special thanks to Ann Thwaite, whose book about Milne and Winnie-the-Pooh is titled Goodbye Christopher Robin: A.A. Milne and the Making of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Artwork: From "Christopher Robin Leads an Expedition to the North Pole" by A.A. Milne, 1926. Illustration by E.H. Shepard. (Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum)

** This episode originally aired August 23, 2021.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:03.4	History This Week is now in its sixth season, which is kind of crazy, but we're continuing to grow and to bring you stories from the past that you've never heard before.
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0:49.1	review if you want. And if you want to reach out, shoot us an email at History Thisweek at
0:53.9	history.com.
0:55.6	Five years in, we have a ton of episodes that you can always go back and listen to. And we're also
1:00.5	really excited about everything that's coming up. We hope you are too.
1:06.2	History This Week, August 24th, 1914.
1:14.1	I'm Sally Helm.
1:21.9	Last night, a train left the Prairie Town of Winnipeg and traveled all the way to the shores of Lake Superior in Ontario, Canada.
1:31.3	The soldiers had to sleep on board. Some of them were probably nervous, maybe already missing home. They're on their way to a military training
1:37.2	camp half a continent away in Quebec. From there, many of them will deploy to Europe to fight in World War I.
1:45.0	So, when the train stops today in the Lumbertown of White River,
1:50.0	many of the soldiers take the chance to get outside for a moment.
1:53.0	Stretch their legs, breathe the Ontario air.
1:57.0	And when they disembark, they see something strange.
2:01.6	A small, black bear cub.
	...

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