"You mean canonical implementation is good, as in "crap, in order to be fully Python-compliant, we must correctly emulate all CPython's quirks" (see PyPy)"
Well... Yes. There are many quirky standards around, but having a quirky one is better than having none as it fragments the target you write your programs to. Also, if CPython is too quirky, one can always propose something like Python 3 (that removes several quirks).
Canonical as a standard
"You mean canonical implementation is good, as in "crap, in order to be fully Python-compliant, we must correctly emulate all CPython's quirks" (see PyPy)"
Well... Yes. There are many quirky standards around, but having a quirky one is better than having none as it fragments the target you write your programs to. Also, if CPython is too quirky, one can always propose something like Python 3 (that removes several quirks).