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.

Throughout his life MacEwan had retained a love of the Catholic Church and, despite his earlier experience with the Jesuits, chose to abandon his fame and success as a tenor, to enter the Bearsden Seminary in Glasgow before going to Pontifical Scots College in Rome, to follow his vocation to become a priest.

Combining priesthood and music, he undertook tours of North America and Australia, where those concerts helping to provide funding for the building of St Columba's Cathedral in Oban.

In the Scottish summer of 1947, MacEwan arranged for Australian and New Zealand food parcels which he distributed around the parish: When asked in 1948 the clergyman and singer said: However it was quite clear his performances were to fund and secondary to his religious duties, where after ordination he decreed all concert earnings went to charities.

[14] While at university, his vocal talents were noticed and he began a singing career on the advice of Sir Compton Mackenzie and Irish tenor John McCormack.

[16][17] Arriving in Australia by flying boat, he took the mail train firstly to Melbourne as part of the Centenary of the Catholic Church celebrations.

The tour was with the Australian Broadcasting Commission, with six public performances and eighteen studio recitals in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, and Melbourne.

[20] The money of 'thousands of pounds' raised was going to build the memorial chapel at the Oban Catholic Cathedral, 'be dedicated to the Scottish and Australian soldiers who fell in the Second World War'.

[citation needed] In Ireland on the first day of May each year, the hymn "Bring flowers of the rarest", also known as "Queen of the May", sung by MacEwan is played over the radio.

The album includes a rendition of Michael Head's "The Three Mummers" (a modern carol recently recorded by Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg).