That makes a ton of sense! I was looking into doing something similar myself a few months ago but I'd admit the deployment went a little over my head. Btw, awesome to see another Toronto based person here!
I think Jekyll works best with GitHub Pages if that’s the route you wanna go. I basically did this. https://paulle.ca/jekyll-tutorials/deploy-jekyll-site-github-pages And hey - we should grab a coffee sometime!