As one participant in a marriage that had many red flags when it started, let me wish you good luck. Here are some of the obstacles that you're going to have to overcome -- I'm not listing them out of prejudice, but simply so that you can present yourself as strongly as possible. My wife too once faced similar obstacles, though not as high.
- an isolated Canadian woman with a serious disability and foreign national man will receive the highest level of scrutiny. CIC will be concerned that you are vulnerable to being exploited, AND they will consider the fact that in many countries disabilities bring higher stigma than here (i.e. that it is unlikely your partner would overlook that).
- you don't say that you have met your partner in person. If not, this will create difficulties. How did you meet? You will need a narrative for how an isolated Canadian woman and a Togolese fruit seller found each other.
- you are going to find bad advice at every turn, as your story about paying several thousand dollars for a visitor visa shows.
- and on a personal level, your case has many red flags. I lived in Thailand for many years, which is a centre of sex tourism and foreign marriage -- but there the genders are reversed, foreign men coming to marry Thai women. There is a bit of a stereotype . . . A man, in later middle-age comes, he has been divorced and alone for several years in his country; his finances are not the best, but he has some savings, often just a few tens of thousands of dollars; in his home country, things have not turned out so great and he feels like life has passed him by at some point, an aging man with little money and no career and an estranged family can become invisible.
He gets to Thailand and a pretty girl pinches his cheek and smiles . . . In three days they are married; his new life plan is to teach English in a provincial town, his wife will go to school and become more than a bar girl; maybe they will have another child, it is as if he is starting over again, he gives money to her family to show his good intentions, buys land and starts to build a house. In Thailand foreigners cannot own land, and his money is soon in his wife's name. She becomes cold, disinterested, maybe she kicks him out, he has no options, nothing to go back to, his savings are gone -- a few weeks later he jumps from the 8th floor of a hotel in Pattaya. This sequence is practically a cliche.
West Africa is one centre of sex tourism for foreign women -- in The Gambia they call the men bumboys, they hang around on beaches and restaurants and compliment the female equivalent of my example above, an aging single woman who has not received much attention from men for years. In Thailand or Togo, this turns heads, radically new life plans get made on the spot; finances are ruined, HIV is contracted, etc. etc. Always, the person who has been victimized cannot believe that another human being would do that to them -- and one reason that they can't believe it is because it is embarrassing for other people to tell them explicitly. The people on this thread who are saying 'keep it smarty' mean that, they are hinting at it, but they're too polite to say so. I'm not! I've seen this in Thailand and people need to be told bluntly -- watch your own interests at every moment! Keep your money in your name! Do NOT make long-term plans (yet)! Do NOT discuss the future with your partner, discuss the present! If they don't have anything to talk about in the present, dump them! If they have a brother/sister who they want to come live with them, you know who that is? Their true husband/wife. Tell them that you are sick of Canada, that you are thinking of coming to live with them and never going back. If they like that idea, find a way to make it happen, and after a few years, try applying -- it'll be a lot easier, and safer too, for you.
