10/12/2026
I’ve wanted to share this one for a long time.
Before Reddit threads and comment sections, curious people found each other in rooms. In 1600s Paris, those rooms looked like Catherine de Vivonne’s blue bedroom. By the 1700s, women like Madame Geoffrin had grown these conversations into salons where artists, writers and thinkers met every week, just to talk about what they were reading, making and wondering about.
For five years I had a version of that room working behind a coffee bar in Niagara. I didn’t realize how rare it was until I didn’t have it anymore.
Your Common Ground is my attempt to build it again.
Here’s what you’ll find here:
Books and the ideas they leave you with
Artists and makers across Ontario (and the world)
Places worth the drive
Small rituals for slower days
And every month, The Curriculum: a reading list, an essay and a practice, on Substack (link in bio)
Tell me: what’s the last thing you discovered because someone told you about it? I’ll start in the comments.
Pull up a chair.
