Southam Inc.

Southam Inc., also known as Southam News, Southam Newspapers, and Southam Newswire, was a media company and news agency in Canada. Company founder William Southam started as a paper boy for the London Free Press and eventually went on to acquire many prominent daily newspapers across Canada such as the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, The Province and Winnipeg Tribune and created Southam Inc. in 1904 to run them.

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. These acquisitions and paper closings directly caused the Canadian government to call, in September 1980, a royal commission on Newspapers, informally known as the Kent Commission.

By the end of 1980s, Southam Inc. became Canada’s largest newspaper chain, with daily papers in most major urban centres. Hollinger Inc. gained control of the company in 1996 and it was eventually broken up and sold to media conglomerate Canwest in 2000. The brand continued on until 2003, when Canwest retired it in favour of its own branding for its newspaper chain and newswire. Since 2010, many former Southam newspapers are now owned by Postmedia Network Inc.