On the Eastern Side of the River Mourne: The Life and Music of Ann Watt, Canadian Soprano(1)

A loving tribute to Ann Watt, Canadian soprano, November 13 1915 - 4 June 2017.

In generations past, it was apparently the tradition for the father of any given family to name one of his sons after himself, and so the Watt dynasty produced Thomas the farmer, Thomas the carpenter, and Thomas the boot and shoe maker.
Little is known of Thomas the farmer other than he produced three sons, William, James and Thomas, the latter being the patriarch of an Ulster family by the name of Watt, the name Watt being of probable Scottish origin, and affiliated to the Scottish Clan Buchanan, while allegedly being a sept, or subdivision, of Clan Forbes. 
He was born in 1805 at a time what is known today as Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Bearney, a small town situated between Sion Mills and Strabane on the eastern side of the River Mourne and the old Strabane Road in County Tyrone, which is the easternmost county of the modern day country of Northern Ireland, bordering onto Donegal, which like Tyrone, is part of the bifurcated province of Ulster.
A carpenter by trade, he died in 1899, possibly at the residence of his son in the town land of Lisnamulligan, County Donegal, which is today part of the Republic of Ireland, and is reputed to have been laid to rest in Leckpatrick Old Graveyard, about two miles from Strabane, and just outside the hamlet of Ballygorry at the junction of Ballyheather and Victoria Road. He is buried in an unmarked grave between two yew trees in the centre of the cemetery along side his wife Jane Ann.
He was a lifelong Presbyterian, and a member as such of the 1st Donagheady Presbyterian Church, in the townland of Donaghedy, situated on the Strabane to Londonderry Road about five miles outside of Strabane itself, occupying pew number 69, as was the custom in those days.
Thomas was twice married, firstly prior to 1850, and from this union, one John Watt was born, although the date is unknown, and John is believed to have emigrated to an unknown country, so nothing is known about him, while his mother is assumed to have died very young.
Secondly, on the 1st of June 1850, in the 2cnd Donagheady Presbyterian Church, he wed Jane Ann McCrossan, the matriarch of the Watt family who, born in Ireland in 1821, lived the last years of her long life in Castlefin, County Donegal. She died on the 14th of October 1905 aged 84, and was buried alongside her husband three days later at 11 am in Leckpatrick Old Burial Ground.
As a child, she had been adopted by her grandparents, whose surname was Buchanan, making them part of Clan Buchanan, allegedly founded by Anselan o’ Kyan, one of the sons of the legendary Kings of Ulster. The Buchanans were farmers from Tivney in the tiny townland of Killyclooney, whose present population is just 768, although there’s no evidence they ever actually lived there. The townland system being of Gaelic origin, and predating the Norman invasion, while the names of most townlands are Irish Gaelic, even while some are of Norman origin.
They had four sons, the first having been born William Watt possibly in Glasgow, a city which has long enjoyed links with Ulster and Ulster folk (what is certain is he ended up in the great industrial heart of the Scottish Lowlands, where he found work as a gravedigger, ultimately marrying Christina Dennison, and adopting four children); the second, Thomas Watt in Donaghedy; the third, James Watt, possibly in Strabane in February 1864; the fourth, Robert Watt. 
Like his grandfather Thomas, James Watt was almost certainly a descendant of the Planters sent by the English to Ulster in the 1600s, many of them originally inhabitants of the Anglo-Scottish border country and the Lowland region of Scotland.
According to some sources, Lowlanders are distinct from their Highland counterparts, in that they are to a degree more Anglo-Saxon than Gaelic. Certainly, the region straddling the Scottish Lowlands and Anglo-Scottish Borderlands, is one traditionally perceived by Highlanders as Sassenach, which is the Gaelic term for Saxon, or person of Anglo-Saxon origin.
The Ulster Scots began to emigrate to the US in sizeable numbers in the early 1600s, and their descendants are to be found all throughout the country; but most famously perhaps in those regions which are culturally Southern, including Appalachian Ohio and Southern Indiana. Today, many of them describe themselves as ethnically American, while others continue to claim English or Scots-Irish ancestry. 
A carpenter like his father, whom also worked variously as a farm hand and electiricna, it has been alleged that in his youth James Watt had been a passionate Presbyterian who played the fife in a marching band affiliated to the Orange Order. However, he ultimately converted to the Wesleyan theology of the Salvation Army, and after having left Ulster for Glasgow, married Elizabeth Hazeldine, who had been born in Glasgow on 8 October 1872 to Robert Hazeldine and Isabella Ross Bell, in the Springburn Salvation Army Citadel, Sptingburn, Glasgow on the 18th of October 1896.
Their children were Annie Isabella, Robert, Elizabeth, who died in infancy, James, Catherine and Angela, all born between 1898 and 1915 in Glasgow, with the exceptions of Catherine, who was born in Ireland, and Angela, the future Ann Watt, who was born Angela Jean Elizabeth Watt in Brandon, Manitoba, on the 13th of November 1915. 
While still an infant, Angela moved with her family to the Grandview area of East Vancouver, whose earliest settlers tended to be shopkeepers, or tradesmen, in shipping or construction work, and largely from the British Isles.
Grandview underwent a good deal of change following the First World War when Italian, Chinese, and East European immigrants moved into the area, and still more after World War II with a second wave of Italian immigrants. Today it is part of the Grandview-Woodland area of East Vancouver. 
By the time he had moved his family to Grandview in the autumn of 1924, James Watt had long forsaken the Presbyterian Calvinism of his Ulster boyhood and youth for the Wesleyan theology of the Salvation Army. Yet, in keeping with the Army of that time, his approach to Scripture was what would be described as fundamentalist today; and he was accordingly opposed to worldly pleasures such as dancing, the theatre, and movie-going; while even the drinking of tea and coffee was frowned upon. 
Some years after moving to Grandview, James Watt built his family a house in Kitsilano on the city’s West Side, but a reversal of fortune in terms of his business meant that the family was forced to return to Grandview.
At the age of 14, Angela joined her friend Marie and Marie’s mother on a car trip just beyond the US-Canadian border into the state of Washington, where she saw her very first movie, a romantic civil war picture directed by Frank Tuttle entitled Only the Brave, and starring Gary Cooper and Mary Brian. Its effect on her was little short of seismic, as it introduced worldly ideas into her psyche for the very first time. At high school, she was a diligent but not exceptional pupil; and her sole and only sporting distinction consisted of being part of her school track team, while her closest friend, the universally popular Margaret Stone, was an exceptional young sportswoman. However, Angela thrived within her school Glee Club, where presumably she first started using her beautiful singing voice beyond the confines of the Army, and on one occasion, competing as a soprano, she won the highest marks in her event in the British Columbia Music Festival.
When she was 17, her father became very seriously ill and she was forced to take time off school to do her share of looking after him. She spent long periods of time by his bedside, weeping for a man who when she was still only a little girl had a habit of affectionately flicking the back of her hair and she had scolded him to make him stop. She was off for so long that Margaret Stone, concerned by her protracted absence, had come calling for her with another friend. James Watt died after a short illness, and Angela, utterly heartbroken, wept openly at his funeral.
In her final year at high school, she learned short hand and other tools of the secretarial trade, while working part time at F.W. Woolworth’s on Commercial Drive. 
After leaving, she started work answering telephone enquiries on behalf of a laundry business by the name of Pioneer Laundry, where her sister Cathy ran a branch specialising in the washing and starching of men’s collars. It was during her time at Pioneer that Angela received her first big break, when one of her co-workers, presumably after discovering Angela had ambitions to sing professionally, suggested she accompany her to a singing engagement at a gentleman’s club in the city. 
Angela promptly took her up on her offer, and as a result of having done so, was tendered details of a singing teacher by the name of Avis Phillips by a member of the club. 
Soon after having made contact with Avis, Angela became her pupil, and ultimately also her friend, and this association brought her into contact with Avis’ regular accompanist, Phyllis Dilworth, whose uncle Ira Dilworth just happened to be regional head of the Canadian Broadcasting Company.