To De-Smog or not to De-Smog...

You'll probably want to keep the charcoal canister. In the early days the fuel tanks were vented into the atmosphere. In later years they ended up installing the charcoal canister and routing the ventilation through it. If you remove the canister and cap off the line you'll no longer have a vent which will cause problems immediately. If you remove the canister and leave the vent open you'll be smelling fumes. One option might be to cap off the line and use a vented gas cap, but I do not know if those are available anymore.

You might want to search around/ask your other questions at slantsix.org there's a lot of good information over there.