After 17 years of leading history tours in places including Boston, Chicago, Salem, Massachusetts, and Cape Cod, Bangor native Jon Ferreira has learned quite a lot about not only those cities’ stories, but also what it takes to keep a group of strangers entertained and educated.
But when he decided last year to launch his own history tour company, Bangor By Foot, in his hometown, he learned that while he thought he knew quite a bit about Bangor, he had really only scratched the surface of the Queen City’s long history.
“I went into The Briar Patch and asked [store owner] Gibran Graham to point me in the direction of all his Bangor history books, and I’ve been on this kind of epic deep dive ever since,” Ferreira said.
Bangor By Foot will launch the week of July 4 and has begun to take bookings. The tours will offer a kind of Bangor 101 for tourists and locals, hitting major historical events like the lumber industry era, the Great Bangor Fire and the Al Brady shooting, in an intimate, casual and engaging format.
Bangor By Foot is not the only history tour in town. The Bangor Historical Society has offered history tours of downtown Bangor and Mount Hope Cemetery for many years, and local historian Monique Bouchard has led them through the historical society and on her own as Madame History.
There’s also SK Tours, which has for more than a decade taken people on a Stephen King-themed tour around the city, with local history anecdotes peppered among the stories of the real-life places that inspired King’s books.
Ferreira said he’s not trying to compete with anybody, but wants to offer his unique take on the history and culture that makes Bangor special. He said he’s learned a lot from leading history tours for groups as big as 100 through crowded Boston streets, and for individual people on rainy days in Chicago.
“My tour is an introduction to Bangor, and an overview of our city. It is a love letter to my hometown, and a way to show tourists in two hours what they are missing in this diamond in the rough,” he said. “If you know absolutely nothing about this town, you’ll come away from this with an understanding of what we’re all about.”
Ferreira, whose background is in theater, has acted and directed in Bangor and in cities across the eastern United States for more than 20 years. When he moved to Boston for the first time in 2005, he happened into a job leading tours for the Freedom Trail Foundation, a gig that several of his friends were already doing and one he figured would be a fun way to pay the bills.
What started as a side gig has turned into a career for Ferreira, who has since led history tours of gangster sites in Chicago, step-on bus tours of Cape Cod, and witch and ghost tours in Salem, Massachusetts.
“I’ve always loved history, and it also allows me a chance to kind of perform for people, and tell stories,” he said. “It combines two of my passions.”
He had been considering launching his own tour company for some time, and after visiting Burlington, Vermont, initially thought he might set up shop there.
“I could go to Vermont, where I don’t know anybody, or I could do it in Bangor, which I already love and which is up and coming in its own way,” he said. “The choice was obvious.”
Tours start at $20 for Maine residents. To book a tour, visit bangorbyfoot.com.