Thomas John Bata passes away

Thomas John Bata breathed his last Monday at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto at the age of 93, says a press release.brAs 'Shoemaker to the World', Mr. Bata was a man of outstanding qualities and achievements who had a positive influence on the lives of many millions of people throughout the world.brHe was born in Prague and educated in Czechoslovakia, England and Switzerland. His father Tomas had founded the Bata Shoe Organization in 1894. After his father's premature death in an aircraft accident in 1932, Mr. Bata was guided by his late-father's moral testament that the Bata Shoe Company was to be treated not as a source of private wealth, but as a public trust, a means of improving living standards within the community and providing customers with good value for their money. brAnticipating the Second World War, Mr. Bata, together with over 100 families from Czechoslovakia, moved to Canada in 1939 to develop the Bata Shoe Company of Canada centred in a town that still bears his name, Batawa, Ontario.