I am sorry. I have seen this a number of time. It seems to be a cultural issue, where "living together" and "married" are seen as being very different things. Under Canadian law, they are not - living together in a marriage-like relationship for 12 months and being married are treated the same for the purposes of immigration law.
Source: http://canlii.ca/t/ft69g (this is a successful appeal of a VO's decision to refuse a spousal application.)
One difficulty with such cases is that IAD lacks jurisdiction to consider H&C grounds for such an appeal if you are excluded as a member of the family class.
Another interesting spousal case: http://canlii.ca/t/ft68d
This one might give you some hope, as it suggests that the nature of your relationship is relative to cultural norms and requirements: http://canlii.ca/t/ft30m
At this point, I would suggest that you find qualified legal counsel. If you do not have an attorney, I would suggest searching through CanLii decisions until you find cases where the appellant (or applicant in federal court) was successful. The attorney that represented such a party would be someone to put on your list of potential lawyers.