Montreal walking tours go behind the scenes

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This article was published 17/09/2005 (7370 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL — Not all tourists taking walking tours in Old Montreal want to know about the historical sights.

“I know one guide once was asked by an African how we cook our squirrels,” said Mathieu Deziel, a guide and administrator with the Guidatour agency.

“Someone asked me where she could go swimming with dolphins in the St. Lawrence River.”

Sauteed squirrel isn’t on the menu at Montreal restaurants and no dolphins ply the St. Lawrence River but tourists still have a lot to check out when they visit Canada’s second-largest city.

Walking tours have changed since Louise Hebert co-founded Guidatour 20 years ago.

It used to be guides telling people to look at the sights on their left, then their right.

That still happens. But now tours veer off the beaten path, going behind the scenes and even allowing visitors to get involved.

“Before it was always the classical city tour,” says Hebert, Guidatour’s president. “Now we have so many different theme tours, either walking or by bus.”

There are tours with historical characters, tours that go behind the scenes, tours that get tourists involved in an activity, tours that look at food, art, architecture, waterways, nature, shopping, multicultural life — even sex!

Don’t get too excited. That one’s about the sexual history of Canada’s sauciest city. It attracted droves from a recent sexologist convention. Hebert remembers only two guides were trained to give that tour and more had to be quickly brought up to speed.

“For that evening we needed 12 at a time,” she says with a laugh.

Tourism Montreal, Guidatour and another agency, Visites de Montreal, worked together on the theme packages. Hebert said some are also tied to blockbuster events in the city, such as the exhibit of Vatican artifacts on display at Notre-Dame basilica.

“We designed a tour in the footsteps of the pope,” Hebert said, explaining the tour tracks the route and locations Pope John Paul II visited when he came to Montreal in 1984.

Another tour highlights jazz in Montreal.

“Some groups bought that during the jazz festival.”

Other popular tours offer an experience. One offered by Guidatour uses a guide who is also an artist.

“We did some painting with some groups there,” Hebert said. “They did a collective painting so it’s way away from ‘to your left and to your right.’

“I think more and more with the boomers coming that have been travelling all over the world, they don’t want to be treated as tourists,” she said. “They have the money and they’re ready to pay to see something that they would not see on their own and that’s the purpose of all these specialized tours we’re offering.”

Because of their exclusivity, experience tours range from $60 to $200. On regular tours, the three-hour rate is around $165 and is shared among participants.

Growing

Hebert said experience tours are a growing trend. She cited an Ottawa company, Routes to Learning Canada.

“Routes to Learning Canada always wants something behind the scenes and stuff like that and they customize their program and hire guides with us but it’s (for) people that are more interested in architecture, arts, history — more in-depth than a general view of the city.”

Guidatour works with 100 guides and can offer tours in 14 languages. People can also hire guides for themselves to get a real up-close look at Montrealers’ lives.

Deziel, who has been a guide for about a year but has worked for Guidatour for five years, plays one of the historical characters highlighted by Guidatour.

He plays one of the Dufresne brothers who led the city of Maisonneuve, which at the start of the 1900s was one of the key industrial and architectural sites in the country. His 90-minute walking tour includes tea and a tour of the Chateau Dufresne.

Deziel took the required 240 course to be a licensed guide and did a lot of research on his own to prepare for his tours. Getting the Dufresnes was tricky, however.

“There was really nothing written on him except a book that was not a biography,” he said. “It was a novel so it’s not his accurate life, it’s only based on his life so you take some things, you let go of other things and you try to put together the character as you think he would have been at the time.”

Deziel said the walking tour season seems to break down into three segments, with student travellers more present in April, May and June, North Americans in July and August and Europeans in September and October. This year has seen a lot of Mexicans visiting Montreal.

All are very curious about how the French and English cultures co-habit and thrive in the city.

“They try to ask political questions sometimes but a good tour guide tries to get out of there as soon as they can,” he said with a laugh.

Hebert said that tourists to Montreal get plenty of bang for their buck.

“The Americans like it because we are a little bit European and the Europeans like it because we are a little bit American. It’s the best of both worlds.”

–Canadian Press