Butterfield & Robinson: Revved And Ready To Go

After a three-year hiatus from working abroad for the summer, George Butterfield was suffering from withdrawal, craving the European life ripe with cappuccinos and vino.

But when the law student was unable to snag a job with his former employer, and he very well couldn’t afford a trip on his own, there was but one thing left to do – go into business for himself, naturally, reports Ann Ruppenstein in this week’s digital edition of Travel Courier.

And thus, with big dreams of returning to Europe for the summer of 1966, the early stages of Butterfield & Robinson (B&R) was formed alongside his wife Martha, and his high school roommate and brother-in-law Sidney Robinson, with whom he also worked overseas.

“The guy wouldn’t hire us back so then we decided, okay, lets form our own company,” George remembered in the B&R office near the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto. “So the three of us got together.”

“My brother even said to him: well Dick, if you don’t hire us back, we’re going to start our own company,” adds Martha. “We were operating at that time on our living room floor in our very first abode after we were married.”

The first journey was a 59-day long excursion, including touring Bavaria on rented bikes, hiking through the Swiss Alps and exploring the streets of Paris by foot.

But how exactly did this very first tour get up and running?

“We got lists of all the wealthy people around Toronto and looked up all the names off of the telephone directory, and got an address for each,” says George. “We got about 1,000-2,000 names, and did a mailing [of our brochure]… We thought we’d get lucky if we got 10 kids and we would be in dreamland if we got 20 and we didn’t imagine getting 30 and we got 42.”

While B&R is now known for its active-luxury travel tours across six continents and over 80 countries, in the beginning the focus was on leading student tours, which was followed by art tours for institutions like the AGO and ROM – as a means of bringing in a little more money and keeping up with increasing overhead costs. By the 1980s the company truly found its stride with the introduction of deluxe cycling trips, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing.

For the full story, check out this week’s digital edition of Travel Courier by clicking here.