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(September 17, 1914 September 1, 2008), also known as Tomas Bata Jr. and Tomáš Baťa ml., ran the Bata Shoe Company from the 1940s until the ’80s.

Bata was born in the Czech city of Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic, the son of Czech industrialist Tomáš Baťa. As a boy he apprenticed under his father, Thomas Sr., who began the Bata Shoe company in 1894 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia. His father, however, was killed in a plane crash when Thomas was only 18, in 1932.

Bata attended school in England and came to Canada in 1939, at a time when Nazism was on the rise in his homeland. About seven years after arriving in Canada, having served with the Canadian army, Thomas Bata returned to his native country. In 1948, however, Czechoslovakia was seized by communist powers and Thomas Bata emigrated to Toronto, Canada where he made his home.

The Bata Shoe Organization built a new plant in Batawa, Ont., and under Thomas Bata’s guidance by the early ’90s the company sold about 300 million pairs of footwear a year. After the Communist government fell in Czechoslovakia, Bata made a triumphant return to his hometown in December 1989. Václav Havel, the Czech dissident leader and playwright turned president, asked Bata to return. Havel awarded him the country’s top decoration, the Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Order, in 1991.

He remained in Toronto with his wife Sonja I. Bata, founder of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, where he continued to take an active role in the business (although slightly less active since he passed the CEO position to his son George Thomas Bata), currently run by the Board of Directors of the company.

Bata also won many honorary degrees and was a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian award. He was the Honorary Colonel of the The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment of the Canadian Forces Reserve, and was frequently seen in the field visiting with its troops.

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