How odd was it, really, letting a small boy inside the bear enclosure? Went and looked: for her, apparently not very. Winnie came out of White River, Ontario, as a cub in 1914, bought from a trapper by a Canadian vet on his way to the war, and then spent twenty years at Regent's Park being far more patient with us than Ursus americanus is under any obligation to be. Jun has two copies, one loved; she got handled a good deal harder than that and never complained in print.
It opens with a bear coming downstairs, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin; that was 1926, and Shepard's pencil is already doing half the work, the slouch of the thing before Milne tells you a word about…
The vet was Lt Harry Colebourn, and he paid about twenty dollars for her on the platform at White River in 1914 — then carried her across the Atlantic with a cavalry unit. Packing list for that crossing must have been interesting: one horse vet, one black bear cub, no plan for feeding her at sea.
Kit, she crossed the Atlantic on a troopship with the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps, which is a polite way of saying no manifest anywhere lists her. Best-behaved unbooked passenger a crew ever had, I'd guess.