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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 pc28����Star reporter in 1990. “I want to give this to pc28����— 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.

Its roots go back 70 years when Bata, now in her late 80s, started scouring the globe for footwear. That was in 1946, when the Swiss-born architect married Thomas Bata, a Czech businessman who had set up a Canadian manufacturing plant for his family-owned shoe company.

With the help of 100 employees’ families who had immigrated with him at the start of the Second World War, Bata built a factory and thriving community near Trenton, two hours east of Toronto. The little village named Batawa still exists with a ski hill its current claim to fame after the factory closed in 2000. (At its peak in the 1980s, the Bata chain had about 250 stores in Canada but by 2005, competition had forced them all to close.)

Sonja’s passion for shoes kicked in during frequent business trips with Thomas, “shoemaker to the world,” who died in 2008.

“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.”

At that point, Bata’s plans had been mired in bureaucracy for eight years.

“It’s just red tape and squabbling,” she told reporter Elaine Carey. “All kinds of bureaucrats are saying, ‘You can’t do this.’ ”

But Bata had both feet firmly on the ground, maintaining that no public funds would be required for the self-sufficient museum. Plans were finally approved for a 39,000-sq.ft. building at Bloor and St. George, designed by architect Raymond Moriyama to look like a shoebox.

In 1995, Mayor Barbara Hall proclaimed May 6 to 13 “Shoe Week” and The Bata Shoe Museum opened.

Praising the $9 million building’s spaciousness, sunlight and translucence, the Star’s architecture critic Christopher Hume called the museum “the best thing to happen to pc28����for some time.”

With more than a thousand items spanning 4,500 years on display, exhibits since then have ranged from Apollo astronauts’ space boots to Inuit slippers made of duck skins and Shaquille O’Neal’s size 23 basketball shoes.

By curious coincidence, shoes also came under scrutiny at the infamous Paul Bernardo murder trial just getting underway as the museum opened. Jurors were being picked and experts opined that their loafers, oxfords and running shoes were being studied by lawyers.

Footwear tells a story, museum curator John Walford told the Star’s Tracey Tyler, claiming there is a scientific basis for physiological or character traits revealing themselves.

He explained that bunion marks, for example, might suggest someone is more concerned about good looks than a good fit while running shoes might indicate appearances aren’t important.

TV camera operators also got a worm’s eye views of potential jurors, sidestepping the problem of identifying them by filming feet instead of faces.

A decade later, it was a pair of priceless bejewelled slippers that made the news when they took a walk in the hands of a thief.

The footwear, once worn by Indian royalty and insured for $160,000, was precious to Bata, she told the Star’s Haroon Siddiqui, “because they gave a glimpse into the richness of that old culture, and also the glorious and superb taste of the people of Hyderabad.”

The theft sparked citywide sole-searching, thanks to a $25,000 reward offered by the Bata family. A month later, a photo shop recognized the stolen slippers in photos it had printed for a customer, and the culprit was caught.

“I did a stupid thing,” he said in court after pleading guilty. He was given an 18-month conditional sentence.

Shoes still give Sonja Bata a lift although these days she’s a tad fearful of heights. After a couple of broken hips, “I don’t have much choice,” she told pc28����Life in 2015. “But I’ll always love a great pair of heels. They boost your confidence.”

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