D3 Version 4 has more utilities and examples of interactions with Canvas. Here's an example of a relatively small graph (~500 nodes, 10k edges) that SVG used to struggle with, but Canvas renders with ease.

http://bl.ocks.org/syntagmatic/954b31aa8b8beb91b30ccb0c9e57f...

Notice the nodes are draggable, an interaction supported by the new simulation.find https://github.com/d3/d3-force/#simulation_find