I bought my first SLR back in 1978. It was a Pentax K1000. Fully manual film camera. I still have it. I am finally ready to move into the digital world. There is so much information out there that it is overwhelming. I am trying to decide which is the better choice of camera for me. I am a hobby photographer. I take all kinds of pictures. I would like to know if one is easier to use than the other. I also want to look at cost of ownership. Are lenses more expensive for one brand than the other. Is there regular maintenance required.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Long, long ago (40-50 years), 35 mm cameras were the "big dogs" in photography. Everyone had to have one. And "top dog" in 35 mm cameras were the Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras, allowing "through the lens" (TTL) viewing, composing and focusing. And, at that time, lens design was slow, tedious, and problematical; but just about to get much easier and much better as lens designers began to utilize computers. The depth of the camera body had been established by the reflex mirror that is required to snap up out of the way to allow the light through to the film plane. This lent itself to a 50 mm lens focal length. Any shorter focal length required a "retro design" in order to allow that mirror the needed clearance distance - a more complicated and expensive design. Anything longer required more materials and a larger opening (to avoid a smaller, "slower" aperture) - more expense.

Thus 50 mm became the default "kit lens" focal length. Simple economics. Coincidentally, 50 mm is only slightly longer (50 mm versus 43 mm) than the diagonal of a 35 mm film frame, generally considered the approximation of the view of the human eye. So, much myth has grown up defending what was a simple economic decision.

Like many here, my first SLR lens was a 50 mm (Olympus OM series). Yes, it soon felt natural to view every thing in terms of that 50 mm lens. But as time went on, I developed a stable of lenses: 24 mm, 50 mm, 105 mm, and 200 mm. My “vision” evolved so that the 105 mm lens (a Kiron 105 mm Macro lens) became my walk around lens - it fit the way I saw the photographic world. I had friends who preferred the 50 mm, the 24 mm or 35 mm lens as their normal lens on their 35 mm film cameras. As I aged and my ability to focus quickly fell behind my photographic vision, a quarter century ago, I switched from Olympus to Nikon for their autofocus system. Nikon also had some excellent zoom lenses at that time, and I pretty much abandoned single focal length lenses for the flexibility of zooms! Today, for my particular version of photography, the "nifty-fifty" has limited utilitarian value; I will stick with my zooms and maybe a wide aperture 85 mm for it's bokeh, and a 105 mm macro lens.

All of the lenses I bought for my autofocus film Nikons, beginning in the late 1980s I believe, have been fully functional on my digital Nikons since I switched in 2002, from the D100 through my current D7000 and D600. And if I'd kept my older manual focus lenses, THEY would work too (I had the 1970 vintage 50mm/1.4 AI'd so it would work on the F3 - I know it would mount, and believe it would work, on my D600, if I still had it.)

I don't think ANY Canon lens from before about 1987 works on a current Canon body. So I don't see a Canon "advantage" there.