Friday, February 7th, 2025

By Kara McIntosh

After just over three years in business, retail store And Why Not! in downtown Creemore will close its doors over the holidays, so one of its two proprietors can relocate closer to her Alliston home.

Blanche Heck is looking for a new retail space for a store in Alliston, where she lives. Co-proprietor Anne Scott will put the space at 145 Mill Street up for rent.

Anne and Blanche first met at the Old Mill House Pub where Heck had been working for 13 years. Scott grew up in Creemore and purchased the building at 145 Mill Street. She was renovating it when the two struck up a friendship and from there the idea for And Why Not! blossomed.

“We were both downsizing our homes and were looking for somewhere to sell some of our things” Scott explained. “Blanche had always wanted a little shop and since I owned the building, it made sense.”

Since September 2010, the shop has been selling items on consignment and has seen almost everything come and go through its doors: snow-blowers, saddles, jewellery, leaf blowers, mink coats, electric fireplaces, a hookah pipe and even a $5000 table. Scott chuckles when she recalls the strangest piece of art they ever took in and sold: some “sort of antique Viking mallet covered in nails.”

According to Scott, the people of Creemore have always been supportive, but most of the shop’s customers are tourists who are attracted by “the oddness of our items.”

And the name? Scott recalls that she wanted a name that started with “A” so that she would be at the top of alphabetical lists. She rolled ideas around and stuck with “And Why Not!” because…well, why not? She says it reflected the nature of the business in so many ways. She even remembers overhearing a woman tell her husband that she wanted to go look in the shop. When the husband asked why, the wife replied, “and why not?”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *