Shoemaker Tomas Bata dies at age 93
(News - Detail)
Date : 02.09.2008Czech-born businessman Tomas J. Bata, who made Canada his adopted country, died yesterday in Toronto, Canada at age 93.
Tomas J. Bata was born in Praha, Czechoslovakia on Sept. 17, 1914.
Bata`s father, Tomas Sr., founded the shoe empire in Zlin in 1894, and it would later swell into the giant Bata Shoe Organization.
The shoe company`s base in Czechoslovakia was nearly destroyed by the Nazis during the Second World War, and then seized by the Communist government of the Soviet Union. Thomas Jr. came to Canada in 1939 and rebuilt the Bata empire here nearly from scratch. He built a new plant in Batawa, Ont., and a headquarters in Toronto, and was responsible for navigating its steady expansion through the 1980s.
After the fall of the Communist government in Czechoslovakia, Mr. Bata returned to his hometown in 1989, where he was a local hero.
Thomas Bata was awarded Tomas Garrigue Masaryk Order in 1991. He also served as chairman of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development`s business and advisory committee on non-members, and he and his wife were both named to the Order of Canada.
His son Thomas George Bata took over the shoe company from him in 2001.
Today, the Bata Shoe Company employs more than 40,000 people, operates 5,000 retail stores in over 50 countries and runs 40 production facilities across 25 countries.
Bata is survived by his wife, Sonja, a son and three daughters.
Source: www.bata.cz, www.globeandmail.com, www.reuters.com, www.thestar.com
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WWW: http://www.czechtradeoffices.com/en/canada/
Phone: +14168484984
Fax: +14168484985
