These closures gave each chain a monopoly in the two markets, Southam with the Ottawa Citizen and Thomson with the Winnipeg Free Press.
Southam Inc. had to sell Thomson Newspapers one-third of Montreal's The Gazette to acquire the assets of the now closed Star paper.
[9] Thomson also closed The Ottawa Journal around the same time as the Winnipeg Tribune, leaving Southam's The Citizen as the only English-language newspaper in that market.
The August 27, 1980 deals gave Southam monopolies in English-language newspaper markets such as Montreal (The Gazette), Ottawa (The Citizen), and in the Vancouver market (The Province & The Vancouver Sun) when they bought both Thomson's minority shares in The Gazette and their 50 percent share in Pacific Press Ltd for $57,250,000.
[12] But the publishers of the independent The Leader-Post and The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix thought the closures of The Journal and The Tribune might actually serve the public good better with one strong, and financially secure paper in each major urban centre, rather than two struggling ones.