Tours in St. Catharines

Founded by the architectural adepts of Preservation Buffalo Niagara, Buffalo Tours educates residents and visitors alike on the architectural heritage of the city and simultaneously raises funds for ongoing preservation efforts. More than 20 available walking tours, which vary seasonally, highlight such treasures as Buffalo’s most hallowed restaurants. The Parkside Neighborhood tour grants glimpses of an angular abode designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who often used 1:16 models of his old projects as straight edges when designing his new ones. A historical Crime & Scandal tour explores Prohibition-era haunts and old presidential philandery. Boat, bus, and bike tours, alternatively, give hooves a break while their owners cruise down the Buffalo River, visiting War of 1812 battlefields or four of Buffalo’s museums.

Tours operate year-round, exploring city hall and downtown by winter and other locales daily from May to October. Members gain access to members-only events, often at a discounted rate, as well as a regular newsletter, which bestows information about the area's history, updates from the organization, and detailed landscaping horoscopes.

A 1968 photograph of Joel Dombrowski shows him as a small boy, peering over a guardrail at Niagara Falls. Awestruck by the crashing waters, he looks as if he's trying to taste the mist. Exciting that sense of wonder in others would later become his profession. Today, Joel escorts first-timers through Niagara Falls State Park as a popular tour guide. He draws upon his training in journalism, experience as a standup comedian, and a lifetime obsession with history to share the story of the park with wit and elegance. For more than 10 years, his approach⎯merging stray historical facts with compelling anecdotes and comical accounts of waterfall lore⎯has made experiencing the Niagara landscape doubly memorable for his tour companions.

Air Combat Zone maintains a group of CF-18 flight simulators that have impressed real-world fighter pilots with dead-on recreations of actual cockpit sensations. In a single visit, civilians with no aviation experience transform into ace pilots capable of flawless aircraft-carrier landings and dogfights victories over enemy planes. Designed to outdo mere video gaming or jumping off your roof, Air Combat Zone takes guests through an immersive, detailed experience using actual military terminology. Detailed training with computers accompanied by propeller noises create a realistic, high-stakes experience. Once in the simulators, sky warriors find themselves at the helm of an F/A-18 Hornet fighter. The simulator is built with exact replicas of the venerable Boeing jet's throttle, heads-up display, and instrumentation, with the action outside the plane projected onto a dizzying 8"x6" screen.

For many entrepreneurs, beginning a business can be tedious and tiring. For the founders of Taste the Town Tours, it was downright delicious. In order to locate the most savoury cuisine for their guests, the owners sent their taste buds on a jaunt through Niagara-on-the-Lake's historical downtown district, unleashing them into establishments such as a charming bistro, an Irish tearoom, and a fudge shop. Coupling mouth-watering morsels with cultural information about the area, the guides are able to construct an excursion that is both tasty and educational, like a tour through an edible textbook factory.

What muffles the subway vibrations at Four Seasons Centre? When was Old City Hall constructed? How many pucks were used as insulation for the Hockey Hall of Fame? The answers to these questions and countless others reside within the brains of LiveToronto's tour guide, Dustin Fuhs. Playing the dual roles of narrator and photographer, each guide leads groups on walking tours that explore a customized lineup of destinations, some of which have made Dustin's personal bucket list. Tourists can strike poses for the camera next to the Royal York Hotel or belt their favourite opera song next to Massey Hall's famous red doors, which have welcomed countless musicians since 1894. LiveToronto snaps photos during all tours, which staffers edit and email directly to sightseers’ memories.