Upvote:3
It's been a while since I had to deal with Russian visas (my data is more than 5 years old), but looking at the relevant sites it seems that the process hasn't changed much, basically:
Again, my knowledge may be a bit outdated but I've used the process above successfully many times some years ago (actually, I've used a company that handles both steps 1 and 2 together, for convenience. In some Canadian cities you may be able to find travel agents that will seamlessly handle all 3 steps, look for e.g. Russian-speaking travel agent ads in Russian-language newspapers, admittedly this can be difficult if you don't speak the language).