Montreal City Highlights 3 Hour Walking Tour | Gratuity-Based

Oh boy, where to begin? I wanted to book with MTL Detours, but my partner convinced me to try this PWYC tour instead. This was an unfortunate decision. Our specific pain points: - Our guide (who is the company founder) was amiable, but didn’t seem well informed or prepared. Stories were delivered as an assortment of anecdotes that didn’t connect to a central narrative or theme. Content frequently ranged into other parts of Canada that didn’t have a solid grounding back to Montreal and why that was relevant to our tour (often because it wasn’t). - Talked about the Expo 67 but didn’t seem to know what it actually was, as he kept referring to it as a “games” as though it were a sporting event. - For every 15-20 mins of walking, we got maybe 1-2 mins of content. Usually in a public square to get a brief bio of the historical bronze figures. There wasn’t much specialized local knowledge offered up. - Lots of missed opportunity. We stopped for a break at a market, but we didn’t learn anything about the building and how it’s been used over time. - We walked through many neighbourhoods and didn’t hear about what individuals / groups of people have lived there, except for a brief stop in Chinatown which was very surface level. Did not discuss the mass deaths of Chinese railroad workers, did not get into the profound effects of the head tax on breaking up families. We didn’t even learn when Montreal’s Chinatown was founded or about any notable Chinese Montrealers. - 20+ mins of Terry Fox. It became clear during this section that our guide’s true passion is talking about Terry Fox and the Marathon of Hope. However, he didn’t bring us to any location of significance for when Terry ran through Montreal. Given how little valuable content we had for the preceding 2.5 hours, this saga was wildly out of proportion and context. - In his enthusiasm for the Terry Fox Foundation, he made some errors. Firstly, claiming that most charities spend 90% of their funding on overhead. Actually, it’s more like 27% for Canadian charities (and TFF is right on par with that - not 10% as he incorrectly stated. They also employ workers, including fundraisers which again, he didn’t seem to know). Secondly, “overhead” is a nebulous concept and a really poor way to judge the efficacy of an organization. This type of misinformation isn’t new to me (I work in the nonprofit sector), but it’s another example where he could have Googled to do some basic fact checking. Or, even better, avoid this tangent altogether because it wasn’t very relevant. How to make it better: - Give the tour some structure and focus. When considering what content to include, ask “Why?” The answer should make sense for the theme of the tour (ie. The story of Montreal) - Make sure selected content is delivering value above and beyond what a basic guidebook or Google search could do - Find a way to tell Terry Fox’s story with brevity and connect it to the actual route of the tour. If people are captivated by TF, they can go on and learn all the details on their own / ask more questions en route or after the tour TL;DR - Walked a lot, didn’t learn much, Terry Fox quotient too high. It’s entirely possible that tours operated in different cities or by different guides at this company offer a better experience. However, based on this I would definitely not recommend the Toonie Tours in Montreal.

Chris did a great job - we thoroughly enjoyed the tour, sights, and his flexibility with the pit stops and tour detours!!

We really enjoyed our time on the free walking tour. It was a great intro to the city! Our guide Joshua was fantastic. Really personable and entertaining, and he had some good recommendations for where to eat. So glad that we found this tour. We’ll definitely do a Toonie Tour again when we travel to Vancouver.

The tour ist for 3 hours too long, the guide was a beginner, I expect more information along the way to certain buildings, please continue what you do and learn about the surroundings of what you show and explain

Terrific Tour! Terrific Guide (Alex)!! Informative, Enjoyable, & Charismatic!!! Strongly Recommend!!! Alex is very knowledgeable!!!