Bringing Winnie to Winnipeg
An early photo of the real Winnie the Pooh. Photographer unknown, Harry Colebourn feeding Winnie, Salisbury Plain, England, 1914, gelatin silver print. From The Colebourn Family Archive.
More than 100 years ago, Harry Colebourn, a soldier and veterinarian, adopted a brown bear cub and named her Winnie, after his hometown of Winnipeg. The story of Winnie, who became the mascot for Colebourn’s regiment before sparking A. A. Milne’s beloved Winnie-the-Pooh stories, is the subject of the Ryerson exhibition Remembering the Real Winnie: The World’s Most Famous Bear Turns 100.
After a successful debut at the Ryerson Image Centre, the exhibition is now travelling the Assiniboine Park Conservancy in Winnipeg, on loan from November 7, 2016 to October 31, 2017.
“When Winnie left Canada in 1914, she made world history inspiring classic literature,” says Mohamed Lachemi, president and vice-chancellor of Ryerson University. “This unique exhibition, now travelling to Winnipeg on loan, is an opportunity to take the story home thanks to the research, digital archiving, and creative storytelling at Ryerson University.”
Developed by the Ryerson Image Centre and Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, the exhibition takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the story of Harry Colebourn. It explores veterinary practice during World War I, military life at camp and at the front, and the genesis and popular legacy of Winnie-the-Pooh. Colebourn’s war diaries, personal veterinary kit and photographs are on display in the physical exhibition space, with the entire collection objects, articles, photographs and documents in the Colebourn Family Archive available to view online.
“Our vision was to propel the behind-the-scenes details of a world famous story, one that starts in war and ends in peace, and which we were keen to propel through different mediums and among different groups,” says Irene Gammel, director of the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre and co-curator of the exhibition with doctoral student Kate Addleman-Frankel.
Many of the materials, including Harry Colebourn’s original diaries written in the trenches, are selected from the family archive of Lindsay Mattick, great-granddaughter of Harry Colebourn. The Ryerson University alumna is the author of Finding Winnie, a children’s picture book on the topic illustrated by Sophie Blackall. The Ryerson exhibition will also be complemented with several artifacts owned by the Pavilion Gallery.
“Working with outstanding professionals, including the Ryerson Image Centre’s Founding Director Doina Popescu, to involving many students in experiential learning about history, literature, curation and digital storytelling was a special treat of this project,” said Gammel.
The exhibition also features a digital archive and interactive exhibition experience: www.therealwinnie.ryerson.ca.
