An hour’s drive north of Bancroft, in the heart of the Haliburton Highlands municipality known officially as Dysart et al, sits the larger of SIRCH Community Services’ two resale operations: Thrift Warehouse Haliburton, an 8,000 square foot store at 128 Mallard Road that dwarfs its 4,600 square foot Bancroft counterpart nearly two to one. Where the Bancroft store is run entirely in house, the Haliburton warehouse operates as a partnership between TPS Haliburton Holdings and SIRCH, a structural difference that still funnels the same community minded outcome: proceeds support the charity’s food security, job creation, and social support programming across Haliburton County.
Inside, the sales floor is stocked with a constantly rotating supply of furniture, household goods, appliances, electronics, books, sporting equipment, tools, and building materials, plus a clothing section where every garment is heat sanitized before pricing. Given the extra floor space compared with Bancroft, Haliburton shoppers tend to find a broader range of larger furniture pieces and building supplies on any given visit, though because donations flow in daily, no two trips through the aisles look quite the same. The store keeps regular retail hours of Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, and stays closed Sunday and Monday, while donations are accepted on a slightly tighter Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 3 pm schedule, giving staff a window each afternoon to process new arrivals before the doors open again. Large older cathode ray televisions, pianos, hazardous materials, and safety items like cribs and helmets are not accepted, keeping the inventory focused on goods that can responsibly be resold.
The warehouse is one piece of a much larger operation headquartered nearby at 49 Maple Avenue in the village of Haliburton, where SIRCH Community Services runs a slate of programs under the banner of creating connection and resilience together. Alongside the two thrift warehouses, the charity operates a Community Kitchen and Applesauce Project addressing food insecurity, a Share the Warmth campaign that distributes winter garments to families in need, School’s Cool programming to support students, a Repair Cafe that keeps household goods and appliances out of area landfills, the volunteer driven Grow A Row for SIRCH garden project, and a Bistro and Bakery social enterprise. Revenue generated by the Mallard Road warehouse, and by its smaller Bancroft sibling, is funneled directly back into these efforts rather than out to shareholders, so every secondhand dresser, board game, or box of tools sold in Haliburton has a direct line back to programming that benefits the wider Highlands community.
For residents and cottage country visitors looking to furnish a home affordably, offload usable household items responsibly, or simply browse a large secondhand inventory that changes by the week, Thrift Warehouse Haliburton is the flagship of a two store network built around a simple idea: secondhand shopping that keeps money and materials working locally. Thrift Warehouse Haliburton is an 8,000 square foot nonprofit resale store on Mallard Road whose furniture, household, and clothing sales fund SIRCH Community Services’ food security and community programs throughout the Haliburton Highlands.
