Sydney MacEwan

Canon Sydney Alfred MacEwan (19 October 1908 – 25 September 1991) was a Scottish tenor and singer of traditional Scottish and Irish songs.

He was born and brought up in the Springburn area of Glasgow by his mother alone after his father left the family. Sydney was the younger of two brothers. His mother was Irish, from near Portadown, and his father was born in Partick. The family were poor but Sydney's mother managed to pay for music lessons for both her sons and both won bursaries to good schools; Sydney attending the renowned Jesuit St Aloysius' College in the Garnethill area of the city from 1919 to 1924, before transferring to Hillhead Academy. When he was 12, Sydney's brother entered him into an end-of-the-pier talent show in Dunoon. Come the Grand Final of the contest at the end of the summer, Sydney was the clear winner, receiving a prize of five shillings and half a crown.

At the age of 18, Sydney entered training to become a Jesuit priest at Manresa House in Roehampton, London, but left after a deeply unsatisfactory first term. He chose to study at Glasgow University instead. While at university, Sydney's vocal talents were noticed and he began a singing career on the advice of Sir Compton Mackenzie and John McCormack. He began recording for Parlophone in 1934 while still attending the Royal Academy of Music in London. He toured in 1936, playing to audiences in Canada, the USA and Australia, and the tour was repeated in 1938 with even greater success.

However, throughout his life Sydney had retained a deep love of the Catholic Church and, despite his earlier experience with the Jesuits, chose to abandon his fame and success to enter the Pontifical Scots College in Rome, to follow his vocation to become a priest. He was ordained in St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow in 1944 and indeed celebrated his first Mass at St Aloysius' Church, which is closely connected to St Aloysius' College. Despite this, he continued to record and tour and further trips to North America and Australia took place until as late as 1956; those concerts helping to provide funding for the building of St Columba's Cathedral in Oban. Sydney also helped with funds to renovate the Church of St Margaret's in Lochgilphead, in Argyll, where he was parish priest for seventeen years before moving to St Andrew's Church in Rothesay. A stained glass window in the church in Lochgilphead is dedicated to the MacEwan family.

He was featured on the BBC's This Is Your Life programme in 1963 and his autobiography, On the High C's was published in 1973. In 1977 he was narrowly defeated in the election for Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. He spent his later years as parish priest in the Church of Our Lady and St Mun in Dunoon. His funeral was held in St Andrew's Cathedral, the church where he was ordained. He was survived by a brother.

References

• Ocford Dictionary of National Biography