Windows compatibility

[apbrwn]

Issue #, if available:

Description of changes:
Changes to allow the package to install on Windows:

• Removed unicode chars from README.md. They were causing an encoding error on the package install
• Added empty init.py in model_config directory to resolve module import issue
• Switched to use pathlib instead of os.join to handle jinja template path lookup as this was failing
• Minor typo of canonical causing failure

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