Former Toronto Argonaut Andrew Stewart is coming home.

An elated Stewart received his permanent residency and the right to return to Canada Thursday after a Toronto Star story detailed how the ailing athlete, who is battling cancer, had been waiting for more than three years for approval of his wife’s spousal sponsorship application.

“I’m over the moon happy,” said Stewart’s wife, Sharon, from her home in Surrey, B.C. “I can’t believe it. It has been so long. It seems unreal. I won’t believe it until he walks off the plane.”

On Sunday, Stewart will be boarding a plane in Kingston, Jamaica, and heading back to British Columbia where he hopes to quickly begin his life-saving cancer treatment. In his hand will be a letter confirming his newly minted permanent resident status.

“I’m ecstatic,” he told the Star by phone from Jamaica. “I give the credit to the newspaper. . . We’ve called. We wrote letters. We contacted MPs. But it wasn’t until the article ran that the file became important.”

Stewart, 50, is one of Canada’s infamous deportees — permanent residents who were stripped of their status and forced to leave because they committed a crime.

His case highlights the long wait times and backlogs for spousal sponsorships plaguing Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. The Stewarts had waited more than a year longer than the 18 to 22 months cited as the wait time for spousal sponsorship applications.

Immigration Minister John McCallum has said dealing with these kinds of delays was a top priority for him in an interview with the Star, calling wait times of more than two years “unconscionable” and “unacceptable.”

Sharon Stewart said she is grateful for the many people who helped her and daughters Madison and Jada over the past three years, extending thanks to family, friends, her lawyer and other legal advisers, Liberal MP for Surrey-Newton Sukh Dhaliwal’s office and the immigration minister’s office. She also expressed gratitude to the Star.

“That day it (the article) ran in the paper, I got a call by noon saying they were requesting his passport,” she said. “Without the paper this would not have happened at all. Our MP had made inquiries over and over again. There was absolutely no movement. And so without (the) article in the newspaper this wouldn’t be happening at all.”

Stewart, who helped the Argos win back-to-back Grey Cups in 1996 and 1997 and played for numerous other Canadian Football League and National Football League teams, was diagnosed with cancer on his tonsils, with cancerous nodes in his neck, in March.

He has also been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease likely brought on by the many concussions he sustained during his football career. Stewart is, in fact, part of a groundbreaking lawsuit against the NFL involving players and “the pathological and debilitating effects of head injuries and concussions.”

But it was the cancer diagnosis that made Stewart turn to the Star to tell his story. According to a radiation oncologist in Jamaica, Stewart will be dead in three to five months if he doesn’t get the right treatment for his cancer. He was advised to go abroad to receive intensity modulated radiation therapy, which isn’t available on the island.

“Because of the rapidity of the growth of his tumour his situation is considered critical and he could still benefit from chemo-radiation if given urgently,” says a letter from the oncologist, provided to the Star by Stewart.

A former permanent resident, he was deported in 2009 back to his native Jamaica — a place he hadn’t lived since he was a child — because he had been convicted of fraud in both the U.S. and Canada. He served 18 months in jail in Pennsylvania for the U.S. conviction and was given a conditional sentence of two years less a day and three years probation for the Canadian charge. The conditions of his probation included 150 hours of community service, six months of house arrest and regular attendance at Gamblers Anonymous.

With Stewart heading home, both husband and wife acknowledge the biggest battle they face is dealing with Stewart’s cancer. He has an appointment Monday with a doctor for a referral to a cancer clinic and further treatment. He also hopes at that time he will receive the appropriate drugs for his Parkinson’s, many of which aren’t available in Jamaica.

Also on the agenda: a visit from an NFL doctor about his Parkinson’s and NFL benefits.

On Tuesday, his eldest daughter, Madison, will be celebrating her 16th birthday. And the family will go out for dinner to celebrate courtesy of a Star reader who sent the family a money order after reading about Stewart’s problems. After that, the Stewarts aren’t quite sure what awaits them.

“The excitement of coming home is great, but I also have to deal with the issue,” Stewart said. As for his cancer, he hopes it hasn’t spread and he still has a fighting chance.

“You need every opportunity if you want to win,” he said. “I’m hoping it’s not too late for me. The government is giving me a chance to come home. I wish it was earlier … but it’s here now and I’m going to take advantage of it.”

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Highlights of Andrew Stewart’s football career:

Andrew Stewart first played professional football in the National Football League with the Cleveland Browns. He played for two seasons — 1989 and 1990. He was released from the Browns in November 1990 after being on the injured reserve list for three months due to an Achilles tendon injury. He signed with the Cincinnati Bengals in the 1991 off-season. He suffered a torn knee ligament in July 1991, missing part of the 1991 and 1992 season. When his contract with the Bengals ran out, he joined the San Francisco 49ers. In the pre-season in 1993, he suffered an injury to his right hand and was eventually released from the team.

In 1993, Stewart began playing in the Canadian Football League, signing first with the Ottawa Rough Riders in 1993 and playing six games for the team. In 1994, he was traded to the B.C. Lions where he played two seasons, winning a Grey Cup with the team and was defensive player of the game. He was inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame in 2010.