On loan from its home in the Assiniboine Park pavilion, the E.H. Shepard oil with its gaudy gold frame was hung in a place of honour at the opening of a Winnie the Pooh museum exhibit touring Japan.
"There were more than 3,000 people there on the first day," said David Loch, the Winnipeg gallery owner who helped buy the painting and attended the opening in Tokyo's opulent Ginza shopping district as a guest. "Two nights ago I talked to the organizer who said 14,000 people went through in a single day," Loch said yesterday.
"It's huge."
The only oil painting of the bear done by Shepard, the illustrator of A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books, will be seen by close to a million people by the time the exhibit ends late next year, Loch predicted. That would give Pooh the type of high Japanese profile currently enjoyed by another literary character with Canadian roots - Anne of Green Gables.
The Pooh painting is the cornerstone of plans to build a permanent Pooh museum at Assiniboine Park. It was lent to the Japanese exhibit to help promote the city and the Poohseum proposal. "We're getting this message out ahead of time," Loch said after returning to Winnipeg from Japan.
"They're now thinking, after two years in Japan, of taking the exhibition to Britain, U.S. and Canada," he said yesterday. The exhibit will tour 21 centres in Japan and includes Briton Ann Thwaite's personal collection of A.A. Milne photos, items from the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Shepard Archive at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England.
The organizers of the exhibit - Noriko Ishikawa and Hairoyuki Nakamura learned about Winnipeg's Pooh connection while gathering material in the U.K. They flew to Winnipeg to arrange to borrow the painting for the April 24 opening of the exhibit in Tokyo. The attendance surpassed their expectations and now they aim to take it on the road, said Loch. The idea is to time the Canadian leg of the tour with the opening of the Winnipeg Poohseum, he said.
Loch is a volunteer member of Partners in the Park, the non-profit board that oversees the home of the Pooh portrait at the Pavilion Gallery Museum, the Lyric Theatre bandshell which hosts International Pooh Friendship Day, and the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden.
The Shepard painting - which fetched $285,000 at auction - is the focal point for the Partners' vision of a $6-million Poohseum that will including a Hundred Acre Wood playground. The Partners are working with the three levels of government and hope to release more details about the project this fall, Loch said.
The throngs of tourists already visiting Banff National Park and Anne of Green Gables attractions on Prince Edward Island will make the pilgrimage to see a shrine at the home of Winnie the Pooh, he said. Build it and they - the Pooh-passionate Japanese - will come, said Loch.
"Even though you couldn't speak the language, this transcended the language," he said. "It's huge in Japan."
The crowds, the joy and the merchandise outside the exhibit were overwhelming.
"There was Canadian honey, chesterfields with Pooh's image, pillows and towels - anything you can think of." Were people buying? "The lineup to the till was 70 feet long," he said. "It was all the staff could do to keep stocking the shelves." Loch said Thwaite, who attended the exhibit's opening in Tokyo, was fascinated by the story of Winnipeg's connection to Pooh.
Lt. Harry Colebourn of the Fort Garry Horse regiment adopted an orphaned black bear in White River, Ont., on his way to Europe during the First World War. In London, he gave the bear named after his hometown, Winnipeg, to the London Zoo, where it captured the imagination of Christopher Robin Milne, and his father, A.A. Milne, whose stories about Pooh and the Hundred Acre Wood have charmed readers around the world.
Thwaite is trying to decide what to do with her collection, and is considering Winnipeg's Poohseum as the permanent home, Loch said. "She loved the story and she has the body of work on A.A. Milne."
The painting will return home to Winnipeg in time for Pooh Friendship Day Aug. 17 at Assiniboine Park at the Lyric Theatre stage, where Loch envisions a year-round tourist attraction that will put Winnipeg in the international tourism map. "If we miss this opportunity, we'll miss the biggest opportunity we'll ever have to turn this city around."
