afaik your character remains even if you cancel subscription. It used to be the case that you could put a long skill (cruiser V or something) on training, then cancel for a month and come back and it would be done. I think this has now changed with the introduction of a skill queue.
Incidentally, it's about time they added a skill queue so I can train all the piddly little EWAR skills etc without having to log in every 8 hours or so!