Hello Londoners!
When it comes to cultural icons, our two cities share some world-famous connections –– and that’s no fiction.
Notable people from our charming, artsy, culturally rich city located at the centre of North America bear responsibility for your both your favourite martini-drinking secret service agent, and the cuddliest anthropomorphic teddy the world has ever known.
Here’s how they came from Winnipeg to London
007 from the 204?
When Londoner Sir Ian Fleming was creating super spy James Bond at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaican, he had a Winnipeg man –– who was also a neighbour on the island, friend, and former superior –– in mind.
That fellow was Sir William Stephenson, a hero of the First World War whose prowess as a spy during WWII would go on to shape both the espionage and literary worlds through his exploits.
Born on January 23, 1897 in Winnipeg, William Samuel Clouston Stanger was adopted and raised in Point Douglas. He was inquisitive, sometimes feisty and tough –– a lightweight boxing champion, he became a noted became a telegrapher at a very young age who altered his birth date so he could enlist during WWI. By the end of that terrible contest, he was a noted air ace, having received both the Military Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross, along with serving time as a POW in a German camp.
He married a US tobacco heiress after the war and began a life of great intrigue, rubbing shoulders with the titans of the day, creating spy services that would reshape the world, and perhaps most infamously, leaving a huge impression on Ian Fleming, whom he befriended during World War Two.
In the interwar years, Stephenson became very wealthy after co-inventing a machine that could transmit photographic images via radio, laying the grounds for the fax machine. This would allow him to expand his business interests into fields like plastics, radio and aircraft manufacturing, film and steel – the last of which would help him tip off Churchill before Hitler’s blitzkrieg began in earnest.
Noted for his ability to collect information during the war and his technical acumen, it was his time as a business man in London and then Europe that helped him become one of Winston Churchill’s key figures during World War Two.
During the 30s, Stephenson was visiting factories in Germany where it was evident that steel production was being used to fuel a future war. His alerts to Britons initially fell on deaf ears, and it wasn’t until Churchill became the prime minister of the British wartime coalition government in 1940 that Stephenson’s career as a spy truly took flight.
Churchill sent him to the United States to establish an intelligence service there to assist with British interests, giving him the code name Intrepid. This was all done under the guise of a running a passport office in a fabulous Manhattan skyscraper, which in truth was humming with intelligence officers and spies that greatly impressed Fleming when he visited. In true spy fashion, his post in New York both saw him rubbing shoulders with society’s upper crust, while also eliminating German sympathisers and double agents.
At the time, Stephenson helped create Camp X in Canada just north on Lake Ontario (he also has a statue there in Whitby, Ontario), where Sir Ian Fleming received his own military and espionage training.. As covered in the Guardian, “Ian Fleming was one to serve under him, and there’s not much doubt that elements in Bond’s make-up were derived from Stephenson, not least his love for fancy gadgetry.”
Throughout the war, Stephenson would go on to collect all sorts of information and provide invaluable training for Allied troops that would result in key moments throughout the war. His “intelligence service” in America would go on to become the CIA, something Stephenson worked with President Franklin Roosevelt to create. The CIA’s home base in Langley, Virginia is where you’ll find one of many statues of Stephenson in the world, including one in Memorial Park in downtown Winnipeg.
After the war, Stephenson was awarded after a knighthood from King George VI in 1945, and the Medal of Merit from US President Harry S. Truman, amongst many other honours. Stephenson would move to Jamaica, where he would help inspire fellow expat, Ian Fleming, to create his now world-famous Bond books. In Jamaica, the two were known for sharing a martini or two –– no joke!
How about that for a stirring connection?
In the words of Fleming, “James Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true spy. The real thing is William Stephenson.”
Indeed, throughout his spy career and into the Cold War years, Stephenson had all sorts of exploits and gathered much information, directly helping lay the foundation for Ian Fleming’s books like Diamonds are Forever – which is loosely based on actual diamond thefts in South Africa that the Diamond Syndicate had hoped to hire Stephenson to solve.
For more on the life, times and influence of Sir William Stephenson, read on here.
Bearing Winnie
Hunny, you know that Winnie stands for Winnipeg, right?
Before A.A. Milne created his beloved stories about his boy Christopher Robin and his adored teddy bear named Winnie-the-Pooh, there was Winnipeg (Winnie for short) the real bear cub and the unofficial mascot of the Fort Garry Horse during World War One.
Winnie was brought to England by Winnipegger Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, a veterinarian and member of the Royal Canadian Army Veterinary Corps who was headed to World War One. Colebourn purchased the bear cub from a trapper in White River, Ontario, and brought it on board the train he was taking that was filled with troops headed to Valcartier, Quebec. The female black bear became much loved within the regiment, and Colebourn decided to take it across the Atlantic with him where Winnie continued to win over even more soldier’s hearts at Salisbury Plain, where they were all initially stationed.
Like all black bears, Winnipeg began to grow fast, and Captain Colebourn realized she would need a proper home before he set off for the frontlines. He gifted Winnie to the London Zoo in 1914, where it caught the eye of one Christopher Robin Milne ten years later.
Like the soldiers before him, four-year-old Cristopher Robin became extremely fond of Winnipeg, visiting the bear regularly in 1924. Winnipeg inspired the young lad to rename his teddy at home to Winnie-the-Pooh (that second name coming from a swan he also named), which his already successful playwright and poet father embraced the name further when he published his first children’s Pooh story that details his son’s friendship with Winnie, called Winnie-the-Pooh in 1926.
At both the London Zoo and Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg you’ll find statues of Harry Colebourn and Winnipeg the Bear, while Assiniboine Park’s Pavilion has a whole gallery –– aptly named The Pooh Gallery –– that celebrates the city’s connection to the world’s most famous bear.
