‘A great spirit and wonderfully generous and brilliant icon’
Sonja Bata, the collector and philanthropist who founded Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum, dies at 91.
Sonja Bata believed shoes were more than just an accessory to match an outfit before they were tossed out. They told important stories about humans and culture, she would say.
Each pair of shoes at her Bata Shoe Museum in downtown Toronto was chosen with great care and zest. She examined them for quality, design and took a great deal of time to learn their stories.
“She had great attention for art and beauty but she was also very pragmatic and looked down at the excess with which we live our lives,” said long-time fashion journalist Jeanne Beker. “She really saw shoes as a way of telling stories about people and she loved people; so it was a great fit.”
Bata, the founder of one of the largest shoe museums in the world, died Tuesday night after a week in hospital. She was 91. She died just two weeks after she bought her latest item for the museum’s collection — an 18th-century deep-blue pair of woman’s shoes.
Bata began growing her collection in 1946, when she married Thomas Bata, a Czech business person who had set up a Canadian manufacturing plant for his family-owned shoe company.
With the help of 100 employees, mostly families who had immigrated with him at the start of the Second World War, Thomas Bata built the factory.
At its peak in the 1980s, the Bata chain had about 250 stores in Canada but by 2005, competition had forced them all to close. Thomas Bata died in 2008.
The two of them would travel around the globe for footwear and Bata would collect shoes that told her about the places she visited and people she met there.
By the late 1970s, she had thousands of shoes stored in her basement, including 4,500-year-old wooden Egyptian sandals and black satin boots that once graced Queen Victoria’s feet.
In 1979, the Batas created the Bata Shoe Museum Foundation and she began her search to build a permanent home.
The museum finally opened its doors in 1995 with a collection of
“I am fascinated by people and with what it is important to people and what makes them happy.” SONJA BATA SHOWN WITH HUSBAND, THOMAS BATA
more than 10,000 shoes. Today, the museum features more than 13,000.
“Whenever she was asked what her favourite shoe in the collection was, she would always say, ‘Oh, the ones I just got, of course,’ ” said Sheila Knox, acting director at the museum.
So it’s fitting that Bata’s favourite shoes, before she died, were the deep-blue pair from the 18th century — her latest purchase.
“She had as much enthusiasm and curiosity for them as she had for any other of the 13,000 items she had at the Bata Shoe Museum,” said Knox, who has worked at the museum for 23 years.
Bata faced many difficulties from bureaucrats while trying to establish the first museum of its kind in the west. At one point, she contemplated putting it in Europe instead.
“But I’m a Torontonian,” she told the Star in1990. “I want to give this to Toronto — it would be such a boon to the city. Shoemaking was a very important part of Canada and people should know about it.”
Five years later, she opened her privately funded five-storey showcase at the corner of Bloor St. W. and St. George St.
The museum’s collection spans more than 4,500 years of history. Exhibits have ranged from Apollo astronauts’ space boots to Inuit slippers made of duck skins to Shaquille O’Neal’s size-23 basketball shoes.
Beker last saw Bata at her Toronto penthouse apartment for an interview in 2015. She told Beker about her curiosity to know what makes people have different tastes and why they choose the shoes they do.
“I am fascinated by people and with what it is important to people and what makes them happy,” Bata told her in that interview. “I hate people who are superficial, who have a superficial flag and wave that flag.”
Bata was appointed an officer of the Order of Canada in 1983.
“Sonja Bata was a capable businesswoman, leader of a remarkable family and an extraordinary Torontonian,” Mayor John Tory said in a statement. “She lived a full life to the benefit of many others and she will be sadly missed.”
She also devoted her time to the National Design Council, World Wildlife Fund Canada, Council for Business and the Arts in Canada and Junior Achievement.
Knox said there will be a private family burial.
Bata is survived by her children, Thomas Bata Jr., Christine Schmidt, Monica Pignal and Rosemarie Bata, as well as nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
“She really was a great spirit and wonderfully generous and brilliant icon and she will be sadly missed,” Beker said. “Bata Shoe Museum is one of the most, if not the most, extraordinary shoe collection on the planet. People come here from all over the world and are blown away by what they see.”