Toronto seems to be lacking for museums given its size, age, and economic power and I am sad to report that this one's more for die-hards than a general audience. This museum has nice enough architecture and the exhibits are professionally done but it falls short relative to expectations. There's a section on Native American shoes and a section on really high platform shoes from the 16th-17th C Europe but the relevance of shoes on culture is not explored enough given what I would imagine its core audience of women in their 30s and 40s would want. The potential of the subject makes for what could be a much larger museum or a laser focus on one part of the shoe world.
I hope in the future they could go more into the cultural relevance of shoes in modern times, e.g.
* the killing of young people in America for Air Jordans in the late 80s or the mid-90s resurgence of platform shoes in Japan or
* the economics of shoes: why can some shoes at Payless cost $30 while one of similar design but (perhaps) better quality or more human involvement cost $300 elsewhere?