The real-life family saga – and the chance meeting between a soldier and a bear cub – that inspired one of the greatest children's books of all time

By Anna Tyzack, Sunday 20 December, 2015 Cole Mattick, an inquisitive three-year-old from Toronto in Canada, often asks his parents if he’s related to Winnie the Pooh. Usually when he is tucked up in bed and supposed to be fast asleep. No, his mother Lindsay replies, at least not by blood. And then she’ll tell him - for the thousandth time - how the world’s most famous honey lover came to be an important member of their family.

Lindsay Mattick shares her family history with son Cole. C.Farquharson

“The fact that Cole is part of the story behind the Winnie the Pooh story is still a little too complex for him to understand,” Lindsay explains. “But he’ll figure it out in due course. As a child, I referred to Winnie as my great-grand-bear.” The ‘prequel’ to Alan Alexander Milne’s 1926 collection of stories, Winnie the Pooh, begins in 1914 in Winnipeg, Canada. Lindsay’s great grandfather, Harry Colebourn, a vet, waved goodbye to his family to embark on a 1,500 mile rail journey to a military training camp near Quebec. He was to join the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps, tending horses on the Western Front in World War I. When the train pulled in to White River, Ontario, Harry stepped out to stretch his legs and noticed a man with a bear cub tethered to a bench.

Lindsay's great grandfather Harry Colebourn in the military training camp with the bear cub he named Winnie

“He figured he must be a hunter, and that the cub had been left without a mother,” explains Lindsay, a PR executive. A few short moments of deliberation later and Harry was carrying the cub onto the train, having handed $20 to the hunter. It was the equivalent of nearly £180 today but according to Lindsay, her great grandfather was always hopelessly sentimental when it came to animals. He resolved to call her Winnie (yes, the real Winnie was in fact a girl) after Winnipeg, his home town, and recorded the event for posterity in his diary: “August 24: Bought bear $20”. "He could never have imagined how much joy that bear would bring,” Lindsay says.

'Bought bear $20': Harry's diary entry on August 24, 1914