Stewart first worked in print as a reporter with the (now defunct) "Oshawa Times", the "Richmond-Twickenham Times" (UK) and "The Montreal Gazette" through the years 1964-71. He first joined the CBC in 1971 at CBMT Montreal as a host of the supper-hour television current affairs program "Hourglass". In 1973 he was appointed a national reporter in Ottawa where he was the network's foreign affairs and military specialist. He became CBC's foreign correspondent in London in 1982 where he worked until joining NBC as a foreign correspondent in 1985. Stewart returned to Canada in 1987 to become senior reporter with the CBC's "The Journal", a post in which he wrote and hosted a series of specials on North American and world politics.