Pretty sure you have that backwards - grape consists of fewer, larger rounds while canister has more, smaller rounds and may use such things as fragmented scrap metal or broken nails instead.
Also, if you're looking for a sort of area-of-effect shot for cannons at long range, what you really want is something more like a shrapnel shell (spherical case shot) or a time-fused high explosive shell (impact-fused might also work, but probably won't affect as wide of an area and may bury itself in the ground prior to detonation, significantly reducing its effect; proximity-fused could be better at sufficiently long range since it would more reliably burst at the optimum height above ground for maximum effect, but is unlikely without electronics); grape and canister are more for use against nearby targets.
The scenario in the original post only explicitly posits a lack of electronics, and at least into the 20th Century you don't really need electronics to make explosives and propellants for gun and rocket artillery.That's in real life, I thought the discussion was revolving around the idea that weapons like you've just described simply couldn't ever be developed in this fantasy world?