Sheida Prince hugs her five-year-old son Shad-Benoit for the first time since November. (CBC)

A five-year-old boy left alone in Haiti after the massive earthquake in January has been reunited with his mother in Canada after her refugee claim was the first to be fast-tracked after the disaster.

On Thursday afternoon, 32-year-old Sheida Prince threw her arms around her son Shad-Benoit, stroked his cheek and kissed him for the first time since November.

"I'm all excited — my heart is beating a mile a minute," she had told CBC News in French just moments earlier, while waiting for her little boy to arrive at the Ottawa International Airport. "It's a real joy, a real joy!"

Prince had left Shad-Benoit in the care of her aunt when she fled Haiti last fall. She said she had been facing life-threatening political persecution, including attempts to kidnap and kill her.

She hoped to get settled and then bring her son to Canada.

But in January, a powerful earthquake shook Haiti, crumbling buildings and killing hundreds of thousands of people. Her aunt was among the victims. Shad-Benoit was playing outside and survived, but was left without any known relatives in Haiti.

"You have a son, you don't know where he is — where he is sleeping, what he is eating," she recalled as she waited for Shad-Benoit to arrive Thursday. "You hope you can find him. You don't know if he's even alive."

3-month process

To make matters worse, because she was a refugee claimant and her case had not yet been heard, she had no Canadian status and there was no way for her to bring her son to Canada. At the time, the government planned to fast-track refugee applications from people with relatives in Canada, but she didn't fall into that category.

Volunteers with Ottawa's Haitian community worked tirelessly to bring her case to the attention of the Canadian government, and in the end, Sheida became the first Haitian refugee to have her claim fast-tracked after the earthquake.

She received an emergency hearing at the Immigration and Refugee Board and was granted refugee status last month. That made it possible for a temporary visa to be issued for her son, who had been taken in by neighbours temporarily. The whole process, which can normally take years, took less than three months.

"I was taken aback by how fast the whole process moved along," she said, "thanks to the people who work for the government, especially the people at Citizenship and Immigration."

Gerard Etienne, a local advocate for Haitian newcomers to Ottawa, said he hopes this first case will pave the way for more cases among Haitian refugees that have come to light since Prince first went public.

He is working on seven other cases, including that of a two-year-old who lost her legs and that of a teenage girl living in a tent community who has been raped repeatedly since losing her parents.

There are still more than 7,000 Haitian refugee claims before the Canadian government.

With files from Judy Trinh