I beg to differ on needing an older version to do it. As I use 40d and I have gotten quite good at getting cliffs to show up. The problem with most of the cliffs are ramps all over the place. Which is what most people don't like. Canyons can be a bit harder to run across due to how they get formed, but I think with the right settings, could get them to show up more.
Try setting your world gen paramaters with low elevation variance, like around 100. Set elevation mesh to as large as you can, and weight the 0-20 to as high as possible, and the 80-100 as high as possible, leaving the rest at 1. Make sure your erosion counts are low, and periodic erosion of steep cliffs is off. Just applied this elevation change to a freshly genned world, and found a spot with 100 some odd z levels, with a brook on the bottom of a upside down u shaped area, the sides of the u do not go up high, but the top of the thing is way up there.
*New discovery*Setting 20-40 as high as possible, and leaving 0-20 at 1, creates bigger rivers and is more in tune with what you are looking for. While doing 0-20 creates more oceans. The 20-40 tends to have nice river canyons along any river, the fun is finding one that has everything else you would be looking for. Always nice coming across 5-7 z-levels of a sheer cliff right above carp infested waters.
Then adjust river start locations based off of preferences, high number of start locations followed by a less amount of rivers tends to cause some nice spots as well.Though how the rivers works, has got me to thinking that a high erosion count, with the periodic erosion of steep cliffs off, would cause some interesting ravines. As it will run how ever many rivers you tell it to up till erosion is done, then cut them back to your desired amount. And the ones that get cut back tend to end up as brooks I have noticed.
Then after the world is generated, you need to know where to look for them. The Cliff indicator on the embark screen is rather mis-leading, I have found. What it tells you is how much the elevation on that one tile changes. For some of the more interesting cliffs I have come across, the cliff screen has showed ones or 2's. The key lies in the relative elevation screen. You want large changes in the relative elevation screen, along with a low cliff indicator.
I run a moddified version of DF most of the time now, but I could go and find a good world in vanilla, if people really wanted.