Thomas J. Bata, former shoe magnate, dies
Canadian Czech-born businessman Thomas Bata, seen in this 2005 photo, died in a Toronto hospital.(Petr David Josek/Associated Press)
Industrialist Thomas J. Bata has died in a Toronto hospital at age 93, an official from the Thomas Bata Foundation said Monday.
Born in what became the Czech Republic, Bata — the son of the founder of the company — expanded the business in Canada, opening a plant in Batawa, Ont., and building a Canadian retail chain that had 250 stores in the 1980s.
However, as the shoe business changed, the company closed the plant and stores.
Bata came to Canada to make his mark, he told the CBC some years ago. "I wanted to do something where I could say OK, now this enterprise I built on my own. Canada was the one country that I selected for this experiment."
By 1940, the Batawa plant was in business. And after 1945, when the Czech factories were nationalized by the Communists, the company headquarters was relocated to Toronto under Bata's leadership. Toronto is home to the Bata Shoe Museum, a four-storey structure with 10,000 shoes.
The company returned to the Czech Republic in 1989, after the Communist regime ended, nearly 100 years after the company was founded in 1894.
Thomas G. Bata, a grandson of the founder, became chairman of the business in 2001.
Pavel Velev, who heads the Thomas Bata Foundation in the Czech town of Zlin, said Bata is survived by his wife, Sonja, a son, and three daughters.
With files from the Associated Press
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