Across the water and home to Leith

Waving goodbye to the port within an hour, not quite the 16-year-old he assured them he was, he set sail with excitement - not even giving his mum so much as a kiss goodbye.

He sent her just a brief cablegram from the ship later that day to tell her he was destined for pastures new, and it took two years before she saw him back on home soil - if only for a little while.

Now, after more than 60 years of travelling the globe, as well as getting married and settling in Canada, the 80-year-old has come home again, and to a warm welcome.

They call themselves the "Old Leithers", a group of people raised in the port, many of whom later moved on to start lives elsewhere across the world.

Through a website, www.oldleither.com, they have come together online over the last few years, sharing stories, childhood memories and photographs, as well as poems fondly recalling the times they spent in Leith.

Late last year, with popularity for the site growing more quickly than webmaster John Stewart had ever envisaged, they decided to see how many Leithers they could bring together.

David, who grew up at 61 Bernard Street, is just one of a hundred packed into the Dockers Club on Academy Street for that very reunion, sharing a drink with John and other Leithers from across the city, the UK and the world.

War-time music is playing softly in the background, yet the sound of chatting and laughter drowns it out.

"Leith will always be home for me," smiles David, a Leith twang occasionally slipping through his Canadian accent. "I may have dual citizenship now, but this will always be my home.

"I had actually been delivering butcher's meat on the day I left Leith in 1944. I really wanted to join the Merchant Navy, so I just told them I was 16, even though I wasn't.

"I don't think my mum was that bothered that I left so quickly, not in those days. I had to send her a cablegram though, and one to the butcher I was working for to say he would have to sort out the meat I was meant to be delivering."

Like David, 66-year-old Cathie Welch, from Burnaby in Canada, heard about the Old Leithers' reunion on the website and planned a holiday back to Scotland to coincide with the get -together.

Growing up at 45 Sandport Street, Cathie was surrounded by relatives during her childhood, with not only countless aunties but her much-loved grandmother living in the same street. When her parents decided to emigrate to Canada when she was just 12, she was heartbroken.

"I cried all the time," the mother-of-four laughs, "probably for at least a year. All I wanted to do was go back home."

But she knew her parents had moved for her, having been told by doctors that relocating to a drier climate would cure their young daughter, a pupil at David Kilpatrick School, from the asthma she suffered.

"As soon as we got to Canada, I was never sick again," she recalls. "I remember at my new school there was a teacher called Mrs Campbell who had Scottish ancestry. She loved my accent so much that she was always asking me to read out in class. I hated the attention."

More than 50 years later, having returned on many occasions for visits, Cathie is enjoying some time with her remaining relatives, including her 88-year-old aunt Evelyn Irvine, before heading back to Canada - her adopted home - next month.

"My life is in Canada now," she says. "It is lovely to come back though. All the memories I have of Leith are family ones, of growing up in Sandport Street and spending time with my relatives. So while all the modernisation in Leith has been good for the economy, I'd like things to stay the same, and the Sandport Street area obviously hasn't."

As Cathie and her aunt enjoy a drink and a chat, a live link-up is taking place with other Leithers across the world, their faces beaming out from a projector screen as the power of modern technology allows them to share the day.

They include former residents now living in the US and New Zealand, all of whom are enjoying just a small slice of the action in the busy hall of the Dockers Club.

"We were brought up rough in Leith," says 64-year-old Bill Brownlee, a retired joiner who grew up on Springfield Street, watching the screen from the back of the hall.

"But the one thing you can always say about Leith is that even if you had a fight in the street, everyone was mates."

Bill, a father-of-two, moved to Australia when he was 28 with his wife Sheila, from Abbeyhill, following in the footsteps of his brother and sister who had already settled there and who assured him he could have "a good life".

He has lived in Australia ever since, settling in Dapto, New South Wales.

"It was my sister who found out about the reunion, too. I decided to have a holiday here and knew I was going to be able to make it," he says. "I have even met one of my dad's cousins today, which has been great."

Two tables in front of him sits 91-year-old Barbara Russell, a bubbly character who looks far younger than her years.

"Why thank you!" she laughs. She is the relative Bill spoke about - a former employee of Crawford's Bakery who has spent all her live in Leith, now in a property on Constitution Street.

"I have travelled, to places like Australia and America, but there is nowhere like Leith.

"In Leith, you always feel like you know everyone, even if you don't, and the locals have a great sense of humour. I like that."

As the afternoon turns into early evening, the organisers of the event, John Stewart, Frank Ferri and Bob Moffat, pull up seats.

Born and raised in Leith, the men have never strayed far from the port, certainly not to the likes of Australia or Canada. West Lothian may have been their limit.

"The people in this room today are among the last generation that will remember Leith as it was in the 1940s and 50s, so it has been great to have this trip down memory lane," says Frank, 75, from Newhaven Main Street.

"The worst thing the authorities ever did was sell Leith off in the 1920s. It was neglected for a long time after that, too - but it never lost its soul."