Up Here magazine for sale, building being vacated

The owners of Up Here magazine say they are looking for someone new to take over as they close their Yellowknife premises and move to a “virtual office.”

The four-decade-old magazine acts as “a voice for the North in southern Canada,” the publishers said in a Wednesday press release publicizing the company’s availability.

“We would really like to find somebody in the North who could buy it. I think it needs that northern voice,” Marion LaVigne, who owns Up Here alongside Ronne Heming, told Cabin Radio.

“The magazine has probably reached its most profitable point since we started it all. I guess that makes it a good time to try to sell it.”

LaVigne said the company, which has been seeking new ownership for months, chose this week to go public as the Up Here name is about to be taken down from its offices in Yellowknife.

The company’s staff will instead work from home.

“We are going to be trying to sell it but we’re still going to be operating it as-is. It’s just going to have a virtual office,” said LaVigne.

“We didn’t want people to think, just because we were taking the sign down, that we were gone. But at the end of this month, there will no longer be a sign on the building and everybody will be operating remotely.”

Some of the magazine’s staff already work from other areas of Canada, like Toronto and Winnipeg.

The publishers say the magazine, launched in 1984, has only missed one issue – in 2020, during the pandemic – since it began.

LaVigne said discussions have been held with several interested parties. She is optimistic that a sale will take place in the next six months to a year.

“There’s a big job to do out there, and I think somebody with a lot of enthusiasm can come in and have a lot of fun doing it,” she said.

“We’re past our past-due date to retire and hand it over to somebody younger. We’ve been doing it for almost 40 years and it takes a lot of energy, a lot of commitment, and there are a lot of deadlines.

“It would just be nice to relax for a few years.”