Welcome to The Writing House - a warm hearth in the heart of Toronto. Come in, be hosted, and do the work that is calling you.
This is a place of deep hospitality and spacious days, a home with a heartbeat and, for those who are open to it, hidden doorways to mystery and synchronicity.
We have welcomed guests from all over the world to our table for meals, for milestones, for the kinds of conversations that stay with you long after the dishes have been washed and put away. A warm hearth is known to draw people in, and so we are calling the writers and the artists hearthside….
You are welcome.
Before we are hosts, we are guests. This house was built in the 1920s by settlers to the area, and is part of a longer arc of migrations, treaties and colonization.
This neighbourhood rests on the traditional and unceded territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Huron/Wendat peoples, whose care for these lands and waters stretches back far beyond written memory.
This area lies within Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaties, and within the teachings of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum - a covenant to share the land as a common dish, to take only what is needed, and to leave enough for those who come after. These teachings have not been honoured and it’s important to acknowledge that this treaty has been and continues to be breached.
The Writing House is located just east of the Don River, known in Anishinaabemowin as Wonscotonach, which is often translated as “the river coming from the burnt lands.” This name carries the cycles of ecological memory and reminds us that the land itself holds stories of fire, renewal, and change.
As guests, we practice learning each day how to live, write, and gather here with humility and respect. We hope the words written here grow from a deeper listening to the land, its histories, and the responsibilities of living well together.
Our Offerings
We are imagining our Writing House not so much as a hermitage or a retreat space. It's something more wondrous and strange, a place where the conditions for writing are treated as an art form in themselves. The house holds the writing. The architecture, the meals, the rhythm of the day, the company, the silence… all of it is in service of what wants to be created.
A hermitage or retreat might take you away from the toils and tundras of your life. Our Writing House intends to bring you closer to it. We are cooking up a special alchemy between our house, your craft and the remnants of the many, many writers who have been here with us - and those long before us.
Writing Residencies
What we offer is uncommon and simple: a beautiful room with a big desk, a cozy bed and shelves lined with the good company of poem and books. There is space for yoga, for thinking, for the kinds of mornings that greet your writing and evenings that offer bone deep rest and renewal.
We'll check in with you. We'll offer food and conversations that remind you why you are writing what you’re writing. But mostly, your time is your own. Think of it as a home that wants you to do your best work — with good doses of inspiration and provocation.
You are welcome to come for a 3, 5, or 7-day residency. We'll craft it together, with love and the kind of attention that grows just the right conditions for your process. And depending on the season, there may be a wild and wondrous dinner with local writers, artists and positive deviants - and we we might weave in a Day Salon along the way.
Day Salons
A full or half day on a specific theme with a small, curated group of up to eight people. We craft beautifully held processes that make room for the kind of idea-generating and silky silence that opens our minds, hearts, and writing to new avenues.
These are curated explorations for writing that happens better in the good company of other writers. Very often, the thing you didn’t know you needed comes from across the room and your bravest sentence arrives on the page because someone across the table just put down theirs. This is the alchemy of the Writing House!
Weekend Studios
Ok, imagine a weekend with nowhere to be but with your writing. A small group, a beautiful home, good food, and long stretches of time to write, think, wander, or be still.
These weekends are slower by design. We hold the shape of the time lightly - just enough structure to ground you, and just enough to follow whatever wants to come. The studio is both a place and a practice - a space to arrive to yourself, your craft, your stories and the things you hadn’t yet thought possible. Think of this studio time as a sanctuary for your nervous system, and a chrysalis to shape your practice.
Initiation Song from the Finders' Lodge
Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.
- Ursula LeGuin