Winnie-The-Pooh And the Canadian Connection‪.‬

ROSS KILPATRICK teaches classics at Queen's University. Lately, there have been increasingly strident claims by both British and Americans for ownership of Christopher Robin's original plush toys: Pooh, Kanga, Eeyore, Tigger, and Piglet. Since 1947 they have resided in the United States, most recently in the New York Public Library. "The Brits have their head in a honey jar if they think they are taking Pooh out of New York City!" declared an irate congresswoman. But as Charles Gordon noted in a recent column on the subject in the Ottawa Citizen: "Canadians, notoriously unconcerned about their own history, don't associate Pooh with Canada, perhaps because they never visit White River, perhaps because they watch the news on CNN." (1)