Through a series of transactions with Thomson Newspapers and FP Publications Ltd. between 1979 and 1980, Southam acquired monoplies in the Victoria, Vancouver, Alberta, Ottawa and Montreal markets for its daily papers.
[2] Beginning in 1897, Southam began acquiring other papers in the country including the Calgary Herald, the Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver's The Province.
[3] The new company, with $1 million in capital, was set up to provide centralization for all of William Southam's interests in many Canadian newspapers and printing plants.
[12] 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.
[15] 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.
On August 10, 2002, Canwest sold eight Atlantic Canada and two Saskatchewan daily newspapers, 34 community papers, and two printing plants to Transcontinental Media including the Cape Breton Post, and St. John's The Telegram.
[21] The deal allowed Transcontinental to use its newly acquired Summerside, Prince Edward Island plant to print the Atlantic Canada version of the National Post.
[22] More CanWest papers were spun off to Osprey Media on January 28, 2003, when four Ontario daily newspapers joined that company: St. Catharines Standard, Brantford Expositor, Niagara Falls Review, and The Welland Tribune.
[25] CanWest News Service (CNS) began operating in Winnipeg in the second week of February 2003, replacing Southam Newspapers from bylines and mastheads.
Although defunct for seven years, Southam's remnants were sold by Canwest on July 13, 2010, when its newspaper publishing division was spun off into a new company, Postmedia Network Ltd., led by National Post CEO, Paul Godfrey.
[33] According to the Toronto Star, this protest made it easier for Asper to drop the Southam name from its newspaper chain and put his own stamp on the company.