When Thomas Bata Jr. (1914-2008) moved his late father’s shoe company to Ontario in 1939, he had to smuggle the equipment out of Czechoslovakia as the Nazis were moving in. Using modern assembly-line technology and aggressive marketing, Bata created a shoe empire that now includes 33 factories, 5,000 shoe stores, and the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.
The town of Batawa, Ontario, was once a company-owned commune for workers and the site of the original Bata shoe factory. Eventually, it became too expensive to make shoes in Canada, and Bata moved overseas. The town of Batawa was absorbed into Quinte West, but the old factory building still stands.
