Shoe lover and manufacturer dug in her heels to get shoe museum built in downtown Toronto The Bata Shoe Museum opened in 1995. The Bata Shoe Mu

You wouldn’t want to walk a mile in Sonja Bata’s shoes. With more than 13,000 pairs in her collection, you’d end up halfway around the world.

In March 2006, Sonja Bata is reunited with shoes stolen in January of that year from the Bata Shoe Museum.
In March 2006, Sonja Bata is reunited with shoes stolen in January of that year from the Bata Shoe Museum. © Toronto Star File Photo

And they’re not all designed for easy ambulation, although all walks of life are represented, from 200-year-old chestnut-crushing clogs to Elton John’s silver platforms.

For the past two decades, the collection has been housed in the Bata Shoe Museum at Bloor and St. George Sts., but it was an uphill climb to get it there.

Attempts to establish the first museum of its kind in the Western hemisphere became so entangled in red tape, Bata contemplated putting it in Europe.

“But I’m a Torontonian,” she told a Toronto Star reporter in 1990. “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.”

So she dug in her heels and five years later opened her privately funded five-storey showcase.

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The Bata Shoe Museum opened in 1995.
The Bata Shoe Museum opened in 1995. - “Some people buy yachts or Rolls-Royces. But my husband and I couldn’t care less about that,” she told the Star’s fashion editor Bernadette Morra in 1995. “Shoes are the most exciting artifact. They tell you more about human beings, the way they lived, their climates and their history.’“By the late 1970s, her collection had outgrown the Bridle Path home where the couple then lived and the cramped basement of Bata Shoes’ Don Mills headquarters became storage space for 8,000 pairs, including 4,500-year-old wooden Egyptian sandals and black satin boots that once graced Queen Victoria’s tiny feet.In 1979, the couple established the Bata Shoe Museum Foundation and Sonja began her quest to build a permanent home. Various locations were considered then rejected including Harbourfront and a proposed luxury hotel near Bay and Bloor Sts. But with three historic houses standing in the way, some councillors objected.“I’m not blinded by this wonderful, glamorous shoe museum,” protested critic Howard Levine. “It shouldn’t be a rationale for throwing out the planning act and the heritage act. I’m not convinced a shoe museum is a social benefit.” © MARCUS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR