The granddaughter of Dominik Čipera, Tomáš Bat'a's closest associate, is one of the driving forces of the Czech-Czech community in Ottawa today. The Community Outreach and Library strives to make it more than just a meeting place for the language of the ancestors.
Michelle Chipera's family came to Canada in 1948. Her grandfather, Dominik Čipera, was a board member and director of the Bata Works in Zlín, mayor of Zlín, and a minister in the Beran and Elias governments.
Return to Czechoslovakia
Michelle Čipera's father's family could not return, as her grandfather was twice convicted, first after the war because he was a minister in the Protectorate government. And the second time in absentia in December 1948, to fifteen years imprisonment in a rigged trial of former directors of the Bata factories. (The High Court in Prague, in a judgment of 6 May 1993, found that the Extraordinary People's Court in Uherské Hradiště had violated the law with its judgment of 22 December 1948 and quashed the judgment. In November 1998, the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic issued a certificate of Čiper's participation in the national struggle for liberation - editor's note). (The Benes Decrees are so called "legally extinct", but the Czech courts are still guided by them. JŠ)
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