“But I think I have told you a love story. Is there any other word for it? “Sense of place” doesn’t seem to quite cut it for Tack’s Beach and me. I hope that in my flick around Tack’s Beach harbour in the 1950s, I have shed a bit of light upon where we hail from, we Newfoundlanders and Labradorians of the outports—some of us resettled, all of us clinging to every morsel of this place, Newfoundland and Labrador.”

Out from the Harbour is a long-awaited treat for readers young and old. It is Rex Brown’s whimsical, sentimental, and at times outright funny memoir about growing up in Tack’s Beach, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador. This memoir captures with fine detail and wry wit a lifestyle of days gone by in a small outport community. Fishing, boat building, farming, shopkeeping, and a myriad of other professions in the culture of self-sufficiency, as well as the simpler delights youngsters found for entertainment in those days, are the stuff of Rex Brown’s hometown recollections.

Rex Brown is the organizer of the March Hare, the longest-running literary festival in Newfoundland and Labrador. This “celebration of words and music” was founded by Al Pittman, Rex Brown, and George Daniels.

Rex Brown grew up in Tack’s Beach, Placentia Bay, completing grade nine in 1961. He travelled to St. John’s for high school and university but returned home each summer until resettlement in 1967. He earned his keep teaching high school, retiring in 1999.The new millennium sees him about Corner Brook golfing, hanging out with the grandchildren, reading about Newfoundland and Labrador, and organizing the March Hare “celebration of words and music.” His wife, Elaine, keeps him afloat.

Rex Brown's profile page