Ok, probably a bit late in coming here but I have a few recommendations in this regard.  Considering your budget and application I would probably recommend you take a good look at some of the higher end machines available from Best Buy in Canada.

Best Buy sells mostly HP and Emachines, and while you hear a lot of people scoff at emachines truth be told I've worked with them for several years and I can tell you from experience they build a nice, solid, stable system.

Although for graphics work I generally recommend the AMD processors with the 64 bit bus, considering your dislike for AMD (and yes, some of their earlier model processors were a bit twitchy) you can probably find what your looking for with a true intel processor in your price range.

I would recommend you purchase everything at once, including the memory upgrade, all as one bundle, that way everything will be covered under the store's warranty.  While you can get more bang for your buck if you consider a refurb, since your not a "techy" type your probably better off sticking with a bundled system with the full warranty, that way if you do have any problems at all you can take it back to Best Buy and have them fix it for you.

Do not, however, purchase the "extended" warranty as these are buy and large a waste of money.  If your system is up and running for at least 48 hours after you get it home odds are very, very good that the hardware will last longer than the useful life of the computer.  In fact I still have an old 2001 series PET here at the house, featuring 16k of internal memory and a basic operating system, all the programs are loaded from tape drive because it was built in an era before hard drives existed.  The thing still runs like a champ - despite the fact it is in computer terms a real antique, one of the very first PC's available on the home market.

Oh, and as a disclaimer, no I do not nor have I ever worked for Best Buy, I merely recommend them for most PC purchases for home users because they can bundle a quality system cheaper than most shops can build one simply because they have purchasing power that most other vendors can only imagine.

So unless your looking for a top of the line custom built system odds are pretty good Best Buy will give you the most bang for your buck, even if your bucks are in Canadian dollars.  The only caveat I give in dealing with the folks at best buy is that you have a good idea what your looking for when you walk through the door - the knowledge of their sales people varies greatly and you often get the guy who really has little to no idea what he's talking about so his recommendations can often be less than exemplary.  

As to my recommendations for your system, with your budget I'd recommend you look for something dual core in the 3 ghz + range,  have them upgrade it to at least 2-3gig of ram, and something with at least 100 gb of drive space.

It's easy enough to add more drive space later if necessary, for example I recently purchased a 300 gb external USB drive for my network for $130 USD, and it comes in quite handy.   

You will want a DVD burner of course, but really when you get into the type of machine your talking about above almost all of them will come with a dual layer DVD burner already.  If you can get a good bundle deal on the monitor I'd probably take it, but I generally don't recommend you purchase a printer with that bundle - most of the printers you get with bundled systems aren't worth much once the original ink cartridges go dry, in fact in most cases you can buy a new printer cheaper than; you can buy the replacement ink cartridges.

Hope that helps.