Thursday 4th May – The Search for Winnie

After a travel-planning pow-wow last night and another tweaking to the route I set the Satnav for the next point of interest, back in the good old US of A, as we still have a few States to tick off our list.

We were a little disappointed at the wildlife quota for Riding Mountain NP.  I was promised lots of hawks and we still haven’t seen a darn moose in the wild either. We drove out of the park with our eyes peeled this morning and stopped off at a couple of lakes just in case.  None of the above but we did encounter two separate black bears.  The first headed into the undergrowth as soon as possible but the second one gave us the closest and best bear show yet:

How many pictures would you like?!

When I realised that we were going to be heading to Winnipeg, State capital of Manitoba, I did some quick research.  It was mostly for Simon’s Mum, Ann, who is a life-long fan of Winnie-the-Pooh (WTP for short).  In fact, there is a completely Winnie-themed guest room at Newman towers (in yellow, of course).  Well, Ann had reminded us that the whole character came from a real black bear cub that was bought in Ontario in 1914 by an army veterinarian, Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, who named her after his home town of Winnipeg (though he was originally from England, it gets complicated).  The bear became the ‘pet’ of his unit until he had to leave her in the care of London Zoo whilst he served in France during the First World War.  In 1919, he gifted the bear to the Zoo which is where author A.A.Milne and his son used to visit her as one of their favourite animals to see.  A.A.Milne created the character combining Winnie’s name with the name of his son, Christopher Robin Milne’s teddy, Pooh in 1926 and the rest as they say is history.

A lovely sunny day in Assiniboine Park

Well, the whole story is commemorated in Winnipeg.  We drove straight in to Assiniboine park but struggled to find the statue we were looking for so we parked up and got the bikes out.

Beautiful floral displays in the conservatory

The Pavilion - where we found the WTP gallery

  

































Eventually, I re-read the google article which told us exactly where the statue was – in the Nature playground children’s area (of course) pics.  

Firstly, we found the statue of Lieutenant Colebourn and Winnie the bear (right and below).




























 





























We then discovered the WTP gallery in the Pavilion building, complete with original photos donated by the family of Lt Colebourn and 1^st edition copies of WTP books by A.A.Milne from around the world.  

Winnie with the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade

We made sure we topped up Winnie’s honey jar in pooh corner with some cold hard cash.

Simon had identified a Good Sam park just south east of Winnipeg for us to stay tonight and, being Thursday, there was plenty of time to do a Walmart monster-shop on our way to Arrowhead RV Park.  We’d grabbed a pizza for dinner as it was getting late.  The RV park was tidy and level but that’s about all there is to write about it really.

What a very bear-themed day!