The former Bata shoe factory in “Batawa” – a company town located in southern Ontario – forged fine footwear for footloose Canucks from 1939 to the year 2000.

Kickoff

The Bata Shoe Company was founded in 1894 in Zlin, Austria-Hungary, by Tomas Bata and his two siblings. By 1932 the company had grown to become “shoemaker to the world”, boasting 16,560 employees, 1,645 stores, and 25 other non-footwear enterprises. That same year, an aircraft crash took the life of Tomas Bata, leaving the company’s fate and fortunes to his brother Jan Antonin and his son, Thomas John Bata.

Czech Your Privilege

The new generation of ownership continued to apply Tomas Bata’s proven business plans by expanding the firm’s footprint both in Europe and around the world. One of the company’s most innovative practices was the establishment of local “Bata-villes”. These vertically-integrated company towns had their own schools, grocery stores, and subsidized employee housing, all owned and operated by The Bata Shoe Company.

”A Place to Grow”

In 1939, with the clouds of war massing on the horizon, the firm built Batawa – a company-owned planned village situated on the northern shore of Lake Ontario in what is now the city of Quinte West, Canada. Bata chose the location purely for economic reasons: it was close to navigable waterways, a railway, a highway, and an airport.

Sole Purpose

As was the case with other Batavilles, Batawa’s heart and “sole” was the shoe production factory. The state of the art (for 1939) five-story-tall facility dominated the peaceful southeastern Ontario countryside while enabling the firm to dominate the Canadian market for affordable footwear.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Footloose Canadas Abandoned Bata Shoe Factory

After winding their way up a hundred-foot-tall pathway in the Czech Republic set atop a mountain peak (itself located over 3,000 feet above sea level), visitors are presented with two options: walk all the way back down, or take a ride on the slide that shoots back down through the center of the spiralling walkways on all sides.

Another feature for daredevils comes in the form of netting suspended from a section along the top. Those who wish to can walk and lay on this mesh, experiencing whatever level of terror they can tolerate.

Fránek Architects designed this massive wooden structure, dubbed Sky Walk and aimed at giving viewers a number of twists, turns and chances to find the perfect vista while they work their way up.

“It offers an endless amount of views, situations and moments where an indiscernible human being enters the depth and emerges on the outskirts of this natural structure,” said Fránek.

The pathways are suspended from a central structural core made up of metal-joined wood trusses, forming a space frame that also supports the stainless steel slide more brave guests will opt to take for their return trip.

Located as it is on top of a tall and exposed mountain, the structure is heavily reinforced throughout and tied to concrete footings buried deep in the ground. It also features an emergency spiral staircase down its center. Travelers can get to this wheel-accessible pedestrian viewing spiral via a chairlift at the foot of the mountain, near Dolni Morava.

“I don’t know of any other timber construction with steel elements of a similar size and purpose,” Fránek said. “There are constructions of a similar size but ours takes on an abstract form that suggests the flight of a nocturnal butterfly whose path is seemingly chaotic.”