Super Monkey, have you read this mini-series?
I personally don't consider it canonical basically because it's written by Steve Gerber. Sure, some consider him a great writer - I actually loved
Howard the Duck back when it was coming out.
But in my opinion, he doesn't get Superman or Superman's mythology. This series was, like Wolfman's stories, a lead-in to the post-Crisis way of thinking that, to this day, only continues to get worse.
Also note that the editor was Dick Giordano, not Julie Schwartz. If it wasn't Schwartz, how could it be canonical?