Thanks for your thoughts, PHXFlyer. But you sound precisely like an "Airline Apologist/Sympathizer" despite your disclaimer! A look at the YHZ Arrivals and Departure boards this morning at 0900 ADT each show one and only one cancelled flight - Continental (
http://www.hiaa.ca/schedules/arrivals_ns.html). How come everyone else can fly?? Their excuse of weather just doesn't hold up!!
As for the alternatives, isn't that something Continental should have offered some help getting sorted out? When you're already looking at having to leave the house at 0430 for check-in and you get a cancellation email at 2030 the previous evening it doesn't leave much time for maneuvering ... especially when you have to spend over an hour on the phone trying to talk with a human at Continental to begin with!
The stand-by option is hardly viable and assumes you've got nothing else to do but spend the entire day sitting around the airport. Your chances of success are pretty well diminished when there is an entire planeload of displaced souls trying to do the same thing. Even if you were able to get a seat chances are slim that your check luggage would make it on too. That was the warning from Continental.
I reiterate that I have seen this kind of thing happen time and again on this route. In short, their performance is unsatisfactory and their Customer Service is worse.