Winnie the Pooh FDC - 1996 Canada First Day Cover

1996 Canada First Day of Issue Cover
Join lovable Winnie the Pooh and all his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood as they celebrate the 25th anniversary of Walt Disney World. The voyage begins in Ontario in 1914 and winds up more than 80 years later as Pooh raises a toast from his scrumptious pot of honey! Not many people know that Winnie the Pooh originated in the woods of Canada during the First World War. In 1914, just before he embarked for the war Europe, Lieutenant Harry Colebourn purchased a small black bear cub in White River, Ontario, and named it "Winnie" after his hometown of Winnipeg.

The first stamp in the set shows Lt. Colebourn feeding the young Winnie in White River. In England, Harry's regiment proclaimed Winnie as their mascot but left the bear in the care of the London Zoo when they were deployed to the battlefields of France. Christopher Robin Milne, the young son of author A. A. Milne, frequently visited the London Zoo and fell in love with the playful and gentle bear. Winnie the Pooh made his debut under that name in a Christmas story published in the London Evening News on December 24, 1925, which was republished in 1926 in the first collection of Pooh stories called Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin and his stuffed bear Winnie are shown on the second stamp in this set. One of the outstanding features of Milne's Pooh books are the beautiful illustrations by E. H. Shepard, one of the factors leading to the success of the book. One of Shepard's wonderful Pooh illustrations is shown on the third stamp in the set. After Milne's death, his widow sold the rights of the Pooh characters to the Walt Disney Company. The fourth stamp in this set shows the modern-day Pooh at Walt Disney World enjoying a pot of his favorite "hunny".