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| - The tours start at a small tent at the east corner of where Rue de la Commune meets Boul. St. Laurent at Quai King King Edward, just opposite the science center, not where indicated on the map (which is presumably their business office); tours start at 11 AM in the high season and leave hourly, get your tickets at the tent.
One of the joys of having kids is giving yourself permission to do things you wouldn't do otherwise. When we were young callow proto-hipsters visiting Montreal a long time ago -- back when the Vieux Port was kind of bombed out and nothing was going on there, anyway -- we'd spend our time in eggheaded museums and in cafés near McGill pretending to understand Derrida while we tried not to stick out so much as tourists. Now, with kids, we're free to take awesome rides on World-War-2 era DUKW boats (we were fortunate and drew the oldest one, unrecognizable now from its earlier military use, but still cool) and toot around getting guided tours, on the kids' first visit.
And I will say, as a great lover of this city and its history and not a newbie to the place, it was a great start for a visit with school-age kids (and several elderly couples along also enjoyed it). It's a short and limited tour, in that it is mostly around the old town, but because you go out on the water for the second half of the hour or so, you get a nice overview of the city, and you get a chance to ask questions. The tour patter repeated in French and English was very good for our kid who's just learning French (and even the corny jokes, complete with self-aware laugh, were repeated, it is very drole all by itself -- what a skill to have!) Because the tour focused on the older parts of Montreal and its relation to the waterfront, there's more detail about "how the city came to be" than what it is now per se, which is really a feature. I generally don't like guided tours, preferring to explore myself, but without sounding like a brochure for the bureau de tourisme the tour and the guide really managed to draw out some interesting parts of the 19th and early 20th century eras of Montreal history I didn't know about - and it's much easier to notice these when somebody else is driving.
The water portion, obviously, is what sets this apart from the other tours (which are longer and can be cheaper), and it was pretty cool. It's just a short loop on the sheltered side of the fleuve St Laurent, but we got thrillingly close to the part of the channel where the current kicks up to what must have been a 7 or 8 knot flow, with white water showing, and great close-ups of some ocean-going ships. And our littlest was utterly thrilled with a car that turns into a boat and back again, which has its own entertainment value.
There are fantastic views of the near part of the city from the water, and the guide very obligingly pauses to take pictures of you and your party with the skyline in the background if you wish. (One of those modern tour guide skills: knowing how to operate every camera and smartphone camera app in existence. Bien fait.)
Good place to start if you're doing a few days in town and are new to the place.
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