I agree with the general trend here...neither is better, both are tools and you have to pick which advantages you want and which disadvantages you can't tolerate. One thing to add is I've found there is a HUGE difference between canti styles...the longer arm touring style cantis are much easier to set up in my experience and have more stopping power. I've had more issues with squeal and more difficult setups with the shorter armed cantis more typically found in cross.

I thought about this a great deal for my in progress winter build and am going v-brakes. The argument for cantis would be fenders, but I'm not sure I want snow/slush catching in the fenders anyway. Part of the argument is that the cantis I have laying around are Pauls, and I didn't want to subject such a nice brakeset to winter slop conditions. I'm tossing on a set of older used xt v-brakes I got on the cheap.