Canvas is not much different to Standard. In fact I use standard to part style one of my themes, because it makes it look nice. The only thing I don't like in Standard theme, which is really set from Base theme, is the fact that the navbar is inside page-header, when it would be better if it was out-side, making it easier to restyle page header when adding a logo. It would also do away with themes needing the layouts like frontpage.php and general.php
As an aside...I also think that base theme could do with a clearfix div just before the closing div of page.
Cheers
Mary