They say that art imitates life, and that couldn’t be truer for Stirling-based author Deloris Packard, who used both her hometown of Harcourt in Haliburton County and her career in the hospitality industry as inspiration for her independently published novel trilogy.
Packard is currently working on the audiobook editions of The Cedar Grove Resort trilogy, which follows three sisters as they navigate running an resort they inherited when their mother passed away. Though the books — which can be read as stand-alone novels — were published between 2021 and 2022, the stories stem from decades of Packard working in the hospitality industry.
“I have a good set of background knowledge and knew it would make a good story,” Packard tells kawarthaNOW. “I’ve always had the book in the back of my head.”
The novels about the three Delanie sisters introduce readers to the behind-the-scenes operation of a popular resort in Muskoka’s cottage country.
“When you go into a restaurant, you don’t know what’s going on in the kitchen,” she says. “I wanted to write the whole story from the backside of the resort, so readers are invited into the kitchen and back tables and see what really happens in a resort in the downtime and on a day-to-day basis.”
Packard’s first job as a young teen was at the former Elephant Lake Lodge in Harcourt (where Camp Eden Woods now offers an overnight camp), located just down the road from the hobby farm where she grew up as the youngest of eight children. Packard has fond memories of riding her bicycle back and forth to the resort over the six years she worked there.
“That’s where I fell in love with the resort business and I spent 30 years working in that industry after,” she recalls. “I liked the family aspect of the resort as opposed to just a hotel. When you’re in a resort, everybody becomes a close-knit family because you work together all the time.”
Though she would later work in the Northwest Territories and Alberta, and even open her own restaurant (The Corner Café in Wilberforce), it was these early memories of working at the lodge, as well as at the Wigamog Inn and locally owned restaurants in Haliburton, that made her want to work in the hospitality industry.
“My dad told me people are always going to want to have other people serve them food,” she says. “I’m good at personal service, so it was just a natural fit for me.”
While studying hotel, resort, and restaurant Management at Canadore College in North Bay, Packard had the first spark of an idea to turn her career into a story.
“When you’re in school, you have to buy all these textbooks, but they’re so dry,” she says. “I always thought there has to be an easier, more user-friendly version of this.”
Packard says an award-winning movie encouraged her to find a more approachable way to teach people about the industry.
“I watched The Titanic and it really inspired me because I would never watch a documentary about a ship,” she explains. “But when they put a story on top of it, I did watch and, in the meantime, I learned a little bit about the Titanic.”
Though she put the idea for the book on the back burner, the pandemic lockdowns finally gave Packard the chance to put pen to paper and create the first book in the series, The Inheritance of the Cedar Grove Resort.
Not to be confused with the real Cedar Grove Lodge in Huntsville, Packard’s Cedar Grove Resort is an homage to her upbringing in Harcourt, where her mailing address was attached to Highland Grove.
Though Packard is now living in Stirling in Hastings County, she maintains her connection to Harcourt and the Haliburton Highlands, which she still considers to be her home. She started an author’s group at her local library and has toured the region to promote her books, appearing at community events like the New To You Community Yard Sales in Haliburton and Bancroft’s Art and Craft Guild.
Packard’s latest book is a non-fiction collection of stories titled Anticipatory Grief and published in 2023. Discouraged by the lack of resources available while she was caring for her mother, who died of cancer five years ago, Packard interviewed several locals who shared stories about their own complex experience dealing with grief in anticipation of losing a loved one.
“The people I interviewed all had the same issues — they were just so heartbroken, but at the same time, had to be strong,” she says. “People that have read it now tell me that it helped them a lot, because it touches on all ends of life.”
One dollar from each book sale of Anticipatory Grief goes to Hospice Quinte in Belleville, where Packard is now a volunteer.
“It’s such a worthwhile cause,” she says. “You can just sit there and be a daughter again rather than a caregiver.”
VIDEO: The Cedar Grove Resort trilogy
Taking time away from novel writing while The Cedar Grove Resort trilogy is being turned into audiobooks, Packard is always thinking about her next story. Though she acknowledges that the trilogy was always meant to be exactly that, she as an idea of what she would do if she did return to those stories.
“They really have fallen for the characters,” she says of the trilogy’s readers. “They really want to go on more adventures with them.”
For more information about Deloris Packard, including where to purchase her books, visit delorispackard.com.
