My understanding is there were underlying changes to the macOS architecture that made some drivers for older devices obsolete. This was the case for me when I got a hand-me-down MacBook Air (early 2015) running Monterey (12.7.6) and could not find a compatible driver for our reliable PIXMA MG3120. I was actually mainly interested in using it for scanning.
Long story short - I ended up wiping the drive, reinstalling Monterey, adding a small (30G) partition (using disk utility), and installing Yosemite (10.10) on that. I booted into Yosemite, connected the PIXMA via USB, and a dialog box popped up offering to download the printer software.
Whenever I want to scan, I boot into Yosemite, otherwise I’m using Monterey, which is as high as this machine goes. Yosemite is what originally shipped with this MacBook Air. I think you can probably go as high as Mojave (10.14), instead of Yosemite, and still maintain compatibility with the PIXMA.
