HE’S A TOUR DE FORCE IN CHINATOWN
Museologist and city guide has history in his blood
In September of 1909, Montreal merchants and city hall jointly sponsored an Old Home Week, inviting former Montrealers to have a look around the burgeoning municipality they once called home.
An estimated 100,000 people attended, many of whom had not been to the city in more than half a century. As one can only imagine, an awful lot had changed during those 50 years.
While it is unlikely that many of those visitors would have required the services of a tour guide, for those who did, McGarr’s SightSeeing Automobile Tally-Ho was all the rage in Montreal in the early years of motorized transport. The colourful coach could be found just outside the palatial Windsor Hotel on Dorchester St.
Nowadays, sightseers have a much wider selection of personal assistance in exploring a city.
For instance, a chance encounter in late December brought me in contact with Jean-Philippe Riopel, museologist and local city tour guide. Riopel, who was born in Chambly 31 years ago, is a genuine aficionado of Montreal history and heritage.
He is also a member of the Montreal Professional Tourist Guide Association, a non-profit volunteer organization run by practising, professional licensed tour conductors within the city of Montreal. In fact, Riopel is an administrator on the board of directors of the association.
His keen interest in this town’s chronicle, and that of Chinatown in particular, was piqued by his father, Jean Riopel, who was a police officer posted at Station 33 through the better part of the last two decades of the 20th century. Often on weekends, young Jean-Philippe would accompany his dad in patrolling on foot the historic neighbourhood. Anyone over the age of 50 in Chinatown knows well the elder Riopel, and his son.
To this day, the tour guide feels that he was deeply marked by these early outings with his father.
When he reached his early his 20s, Jean-Philippe Riopel travelled the world for two years. He spent four months in China, a country and culture to which, he says, he is greatly attracted. Nevertheless, when asked about his ability to speak the language, Riopel self-effacingly responded: “Even when I said, ‘I don’t understand’ in Chinese, they didn’t understand.”
Upon returning to Montreal, he embarked on a program in museum studies at the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec. He continues his learning to this day as he is registered in a related curriculum, this time at Université du Québec à Montréal.
Riopel works principally for four city tour guide agencies: Kaléidoscope, Guidatour, Fitz & Follwell and Grayline. Not surprisingly, the inveterate trekker specializes in excursions in and around Chinatown, where he has lived now for nearly eight years.
It is the area of Montreal that he knows best. He particularly enjoys showing visitors the Buddhist temple in the basement of the building adjacent to his own flat.
The young man’s passion for Montreal history extends even to his own backyard, where he has discovered, just below the surface, several items dating from the 1800s, including part of a chamber pot. Then known as the Faubourg Près-de-Ville, the area now known as Chinatown was one of the first to develop after the demolition of city’s old fortifications was completed in 1822.
Riopel is convinced that much more could be discovered with further exploration, but as a tenant he feels he cannot undertake the archeological dig without the consent of his landlord.
Even when I said, ‘I don’t understand’ in Chinese, they didn’t understand.
According to municipal regulations that govern the trade, only licensed, bilingual individuals are permitted to serve as tour guides in the city. In 2014, there were some 166 in all, 128 of whom are also members of the Association professionelle des guides touristiques.
Most, like Riopel, work freelance and are available to large touring companies when needed. A handful have found permanent work at places like Notre-Dame Basilica or the Pointe-à-Callière Museum of Archeology and History in Old Montreal.