Here's one I bet you didn't know:
During WWI, Canadian troops were transported to Europe via eastern Canada, specifically through Winnipeg. On his stopover in Winnipeg, Lt Harry Colebourn bought a small black bear cub from a hunter who had killed its mother. He named the bear Winnipeg, or Winnie for short (know where this is going now?).
Winnie made the trip across the Atlantic to England with Lt. Colebourn's unit, but when the troops were sent to France for battle, Colebourn took Winnie to the London Zoo. At the zoo, the bear quickly became the favorite attraction of... you guessed it, Christopher Robin, son of famed author A.A. Milne. Christopher named his own stuffed bear after Winnie and thus, Winnie-the-Pooh as we know it today was born of a Canadian lieutenant's impulse buy.