For decades, Grant Simpson has entertained both locals and tourists with his vaudeville acts and music.

Now the veteran of the territory’s music scene is heading south – though he says he’d still like to bring his Klondike Follies back to Whitehorse next summer if there’s a contract for the show.

Simpson said in an interview Monday he and his partner will be heading to Winnipeg after Oct. 1 as his partner gets set to study set design through a program there. He aims to get into the busy music scene there.

While Simpson said he loves the territory and the capital city that has been his home base for decades, he said it’s time to move on.

It’s difficult to make a living in Whitehorse working in music, Simpson said.

While he’s able to stay in the territory through the summer, he noted, he’s normally had to tour down south from about October to February.

Leaving Whitehorse to tour also comes at a much higher cost than going on tour from a more southern centre.

As Simpson described it, while he’s keeping his head above water, it’s becoming more difficult to do so.

It’s been clear for some time that he would have to make a change.

“The timing is right,” he said.

He’s had his eye on Winnipeg for some time, with its booming music scene, and a number of friends based out of the Manitoba capital.

Once his partner started talking about studying set design there, it was clear the move was meant to be.

He pointed out that Winnipeg is home to the Pantages Playhouse Theatre, which had been built by Alexander Pantages in 1914, with the theatre set to be the hub of his vaudeville chain he ran throughout North America.

Before that, Pantages was one of the many who made their way to Skagway and eventually Dawson City during the Gold Rush. As it was noted on the theatre’s website, it was in Dawson where he met Klondike Kate Rockwell.

“He soon gained her confidence, took up residence with her and, it is said, that they even talked of marriage,” it’s noted

“In 1902, with the Gold Rush winding down, Pantages moved to Seattle while Kate stayed in Alaska on the promise to join him later.

“Using Kate’s money, he opened the Lois Theatre. Unbeknownst to Kate, Pantages met and married Lois Mendenhall while she was still in Alaska.”

Pantages would go on to become a theatre tycoon, owning 30 theatres by 1926 and having controlling shares in another 42. At the peak of his career, his net worth was estimated at $50 million.

Noting the history of the Pantages Playhouse Theatre and the Yukon connection, Simpson said he’d love to explore the possibility of doing some vaudeville shows there.

Many long-time Yukoners have been shocked by Simpson’s plans to relocate.

He points out he really hasn’t spent a full winter in the Yukon for a number of years given his touring schedule.

“I love Whitehorse,” he said, adding that the community proved a great place for his now-adult children to grow up.

But now it’s the right time to make a change, he said.

It’s a move that comes nearly 40 years after Simpson first arrived in the territory from Nanaimo, B.C., when he was just 20 years old.

He was hired by the Frantic Follies vaudeville show to perform similar shows at Diamond Tooth Gerties in Dawson City.

The following summer, Simpson was asked to be part of the Follies’ Whitehorse show, which he later bought into as a partner.

As he recalled in an interview when he announced the Follies would no longer be staged, the Frantic Follies gave him a life in vaudeville, and “it’s been great.”

The show featured, as Simpson described it, “goofy humour” of the Gold Rush era through a vaudeville performance.

The Follies had started in the late 1960s as an amateur production before the first professional season in 1970.

It expanded through the 1970s and would also be staged in Florida over four months in the early 1980s as well as take to a 10-city North American Tour over two weeks in 1990.

In 2017, when Simpson announced the show would no longer be performed, he explained it was no longer sustainable.

It had lost 60 per cent of its revenue a few years earlier when Holland America cancelled its confirmed bookings for their guests for the performance.

It had operated on a shoe string budget since then and couldn’t keep going as it had.

Simpson did host two Klondike Follies events in the summer of 2017, with a more full schedule this season.

As Simpson noted though, the Klondike Follies is a different show from the Frantic Follies was.

The new show featured a number of headline acts with about 20 shows this season aimed at entertaining the local audience as well as tourists.

The Frantic Follies had been aimed largely at the revolving stream of tourists with shows performed every night through the summer.

Simpson said he was pleased with how well the Klondike Follies was received in this first year, and he hopes to be back next season if a contract for the show comes his way. `