At 11:00 a.m. on August 27, 1980, the printing presses inside the Winnipeg Tribune were halted mid-run, and 400 journalists and plant workers were called onto the newsroom floor to be told the 90-year-old paper was dead. Across the country at the same moment, the 95-year-old Ottawa Journal locked its doors and dismissed 375 staff. In July 1981, Chairman Tom Kent tabled the final report of the Royal Commission on Newspapers, finding that two corporate conglomerates, Thomson Newspapers and Southam Inc., had coordinated a national market division that eliminated competition across Canadian cities, leaving three chains in control of two-thirds of English-language circulation and three chains controlling nine-tenths of the French-language press. Ottawa shelved the commission's divestment plan, leaving intact the chain architecture that later consolidated Canada's local dailies under debt-financed holding companies.
The events of August 27, 1980, known across Canadian newsrooms as Black Wednesday, were not the result of ordinary market attrition. They were the product of a coordinated corporate trade. In a single synchronized sequence, Thomson closed the Ottawa Journal, surrendering the capital city's English daily market to Southam's Ottawa Citizen. In return, Southam shuttered the Winnipeg Tribune, handing Thomson's Winnipeg Free Press an uncontested monopoly in Manitoba.
Simultaneously, Southam purchased Thomson's one-third interest in The Gazette in Montreal, consolidating an English monopoly in Quebec's largest metropolis. To complete the transaction, Southam acquired Thomson's 50 percent holding in Pacific Press, securing total ownership of both The Vancouver Sun and The Province.
Within six days of the closures, as public anger mounted over the sudden dismissal of nearly 800 newspaper employees and the disappearance of independent civic voices, the federal cabinet issued Order in Council P.C. 1980-2343. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appointed a royal commission chaired by Tom Kent, a former editor of the Winnipeg Free Press and principal policy adviser to Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, alongside commissioners Borden Spears, a veteran editor and ombudsman at the Toronto Star, and Laurent Picard, former president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Their mandate was to examine the daily newspaper industry, investigate the concentration of corporate ownership, and determine whether the Canadian public retained any genuine freedom of information when the presses of the nation were controlled by a handful of corporate boardrooms.
The Geography of Chain Monopoly
When the Kent Commission completed its national audit of Canada's 117 daily newspapers, it discovered an industry where independent journalism had been largely displaced by corporate holding companies.
Between 1970 and 1980, the number of independent daily newspapers in Canada had fallen from 45 to 29. Meanwhile, chain-owned dailies had climbed from 69 to 88, representing 75 percent of all daily titles published in the country.
In English-speaking Canada, three corporate entities controlled 67 percent of all daily circulation and half of all titles. Thomson Newspapers Limited, which had built its fortune on small-town monopoly papers before acquiring FP Publications in early 1980, owned 40 daily newspapers, accounting for 25.9 percent of national English circulation. Southam Inc. owned 14 large metropolitan dailies, controlling 32.8 percent. Together with the newly expanding Toronto Sun Publishing, which controlled 8.3 percent, these three chains commanded more than two-thirds of the English reading public.
In French-speaking Canada, concentration was even more pronounced. Three corporate groups controlled nine-tenths of all daily circulation. Pierre Peladeau's Quebecor commanded 39.8 percent through his high-circulation tabloids, Le Journal de Montreal and Le Journal de Quebec. Paul Desmarais's Gesca, a subsidiary of the Power Corporation conglomerate, controlled 24.6 percent through La Presse and regional dailies. Jacques Francoeur's UniMedia held 12.5 percent through Le Soleil in Quebec City and Le Droit in Ottawa. Independent French-language daily journalism survived almost solely through Le Devoir, which struggled for financial solvency while reaching only a fraction of provincial readers.
Across the provinces, the commission mapped a country partitioned into private information monopolies:
In seven of Canada's ten provinces, two-thirds or more of total daily circulation was controlled by a single corporate chain.
In New Brunswick, industrialist K.C. Irving and his family held an absolute monopoly, owning all five English daily newspapers: the morning and afternoon papers in Saint John, the two titles in Moncton, and the Daily Gleaner in Fredericton. The Irving papers represented 90.6 percent of provincial circulation, with the independent Acadian daily L'Evangeline holding the remaining 9.4 percent. The Irving family simultaneously owned the dominant private television and radio stations in the province.
In Prince Edward Island, daily newspaper circulation was 100 percent chain-owned: Thomson controlled 67.5 percent through the Charlottetown Guardian and Evening Patriot, while Conrad Black's Sterling chain owned the remaining 32.5 percent through the Summerside Journal-Pioneer.
In Newfoundland, Thomson controlled 83.5 percent of provincial circulation through The Telegram in St. John's and The Western Star in Corner Brook.
In Manitoba, Southam's closure of the Winnipeg Tribune handed Thomson an 87.1 percent share of provincial circulation through the Winnipeg Free Press.
In British Columbia, Southam controlled 65.8 percent and Thomson held 22.4 percent. Between them, two chains owned 88.2 percent of all daily newspapers sold in the province, with Southam owning both daily mastheads in Vancouver.
In Alberta, Southam controlled 65.1 percent through the Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal, while the Toronto Sun chain held 23.1 percent.
"Head-to-head competition between similar dailies in the same morning or afternoon market no longer exists at all," the commissioners wrote. Canadian cities had been transformed into one-newspaper towns, where citizens had no choice in who gathered their civic news, who scrutinized their municipal councils, or whose editorial priorities shaped their public debates.
"They Happen to Be Newspapers"
The central quantitative section of the Kent Report was its forensic examination of newspaper balance sheets. Corporate publishers routinely justified consolidation by arguing that rising production costs, expensive computerized photo-composition, and television advertising competition made chain ownership necessary for financial survival.
The commission's financial analysis contradicted that defense. Daily newspaper publishing in Canada was not struggling to survive; it was among the most profitable commercial sectors in the Canadian economy.
Monopoly newspapers operated with profit margins far above ordinary manufacturing and retail benchmarks. In cities where a chain possessed a monopoly, operating profit margins before taxes consistently ranged between 20 and 35 percent of total revenues.
Thomson Newspapers Limited generated exceptional returns. The commission examined Thomson's confidential corporate accounts and revealed that its return on net assets employed, before interest and income taxes, averaged 70.4 percent in 1973 and climbed to 76.8 percent in 1979. Even in 1980, after absorbing the substantial acquisition debt of FP Publications, Thomson's return on net assets remained at 53.2 percent.
While Thomson Newspapers accounted for only 7.9 percent of the gross revenues of Kenneth Thomson's corporate empire, which included the Hudson's Bay Company and international travel firms, the Canadian newspapers generated 35.9 percent of the conglomerate's total net income.
When Chairman Tom Kent questioned Kenneth Thomson during public hearings about the social and civic duties of his newspaper chain, the proprietor gave a direct answer:
"Look, we are running a business organization. They happen to be newspapers."
Thomson conceded that he had little personal connection to the communities his papers served: "I don't get around to see them very much personally, the individual papers, so I'm not as close to them in a sense, as I would like to be... But I can get the feel of our organization from our head office basically."
Pierre Peladeau of Quebecor offered a similar assessment of journalistic public service: "The name of the game is profit. If you don't make a profit, you don't have a newspaper. And you can develop a very pretty philosophy, but..."
The Kent Commission documented what happened to those earnings. Instead of being reinvested in investigative reporting, foreign bureaus, or comprehensive regional coverage, the cash flow generated by Canadian newspaper readers was directed out of local communities to finance unrelated corporate ventures.
In 1978, the Thomson family hypothecated (pledged as collateral) shares of Thomson Newspapers Limited to secure a major commercial loan from the Royal Bank of Canada. The purpose was not to upgrade a printing plant in Ontario or expand reporting in the Maritimes; it was to finance exploration for oil in the North Sea. The monopoly profits paid by Canadian subscribers and local merchants in Moose Jaw, Guelph, and Charlottetown were underwriting offshore oil platforms in the United Kingdom.
While profits flowed out to parent conglomerates, newsroom budgets were held down. The commission sent researchers into newsrooms across Canada and documented widespread staff turnover and low morale.
Chains kept their editorial expenditures tightly capped, routinely allocating between 8 and 15 percent of total newspaper revenues to newsgathering. Local newsrooms operated with small staffs of young, low-paid reporters who turned over frequently. Wire copy and syndicated features filled the space between department store advertisements, while municipal halls, courts, and provincial agencies operated without steady journalistic coverage.
"Freedom of the press," the commissioners declared on the opening page of their report, "is not a property right of owners. It is a right of the people. It is part of their right to free expression, inseparable from their right to inform themselves."
Citing Justice Hugo Black of the United States Supreme Court, the commission argued that constitutional freedom of the press from state censorship did not sanction the private repression of press freedom by corporate oligopolies.
The Proposed Canada Newspaper Act
To dismantle corporate control and protect the democratic function of the press, the Kent Commission rejected half-measures. It presented a comprehensive statutory architecture embodied in a proposed Canada Newspaper Act.
The commission recognized that existing commercial law was completely ineffective. The federal Combines Investigation Act had proven powerless to halt chain mergers or penalize market division. Kent proposed creating a specialized administrative and regulatory framework:
First, the establishment of an independent *Press Rights Panel*, housed within the Canadian Human Rights Commission but reporting directly to Parliament through the Minister of Justice. The three-member panel, appointed for staggered terms of three to seven years, would act as a national ombudsman for the press, monitoring newspaper performance and investigating ownership concentration.
Second, *statutory limits on chain concentration*. No corporate entity would be permitted to own more than five daily newspapers. No chain would be allowed to control more than a specified percentage of total national circulation.
Thomson Newspapers would be forced to choose between its national flagship, The Globe and Mail, or its chain of 40 regional daily papers. It could not keep both.
Armadale would be required to divest either the Regina Leader-Post or the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, ending its dual-city dominance over Saskatchewan's urban press.
Cross-media ownership would be prohibited. A daily newspaper proprietor would be barred from owning television or radio broadcasting stations in the same market. Southam would be forced to divest its controlling holdings in Selkirk Communications, and the Irving family in New Brunswick would be forced to break apart its broadcast and publishing empire.
Fourth, a *technological firewall on electronic publishing*. Foreseeing the emergence of screenprint, videotex, and digital database services (such as Canada's Telidon system), the commission recommended that telecommunications and cable carriers be strictly prohibited from acting as content providers. Common carriers could transmit news, but could not own or control the information flow, heading off digital monopoly before it began.
Fifth, *institutional protection for editorial independence. For any newspaper owned by a conglomerate with outside business interests, the Canada Newspaper Act* would require that the editor-in-chief be appointed under a legally binding, public written contract. The contract would guarantee the editor exclusive authority over news policy and newsroom budgets, free from proprietorial interference.
In addition, every chain newspaper would be required to establish a local *Editorial Advisory Committee*. Composed of two members appointed by the owner, two working journalists elected by secret ballot from the newsroom, and three public representatives chosen from the community, the committee would review annual editorial performance, discuss newsroom budgets, and publish independent annual reports in the paper's own pages.
Finally, the commission proposed a direct *financial incentive for journalism*. Kent designed a system of tax credits and penalties linked to editorial investment. Newspapers that spent above industry averages on their newsrooms would receive tax credits. Conversely, chain owners who artificially restricted newsroom budgets to extract excessive profits would be hit with a mandatory 25 percent surtax on the shortfall. If an owner skimped on local reporting to pocket $500,000 in additional corporate dividends, the federal government would claw back the profit through taxation.
The Publisher Rebellion and the Unshackled Chains
The reaction from corporate publishers was immediate and coordinated.
From Vancouver to St. John's, daily newspaper front pages and editorial columns denounced the Kent Commission. Publishers who had spent decades consolidating local markets framed the report's recommendations as a state assault on freedom of the press.
The Canadian Daily Newspaper Publishers Association organized an intensive lobbying campaign in Ottawa. Corporate owners argued that Tom Kent's proposals amounted to government licensing of journalists, state control of newsrooms, and political censorship. The Canadian Bar Association and commercial media executives warned that statutory restrictions on newspaper ownership would violate the newly emerging Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Confronted by unified industry opposition, the federal Liberal government stepped back. In May 1982, Minister of State for Multiculturalism Jim Fleming announced that the government would introduce a modified Daily Newspaper Act.
Fleming's proposal dropped the commission's structural divestment rules. There would be no forced breakups of existing chains. Thomson would keep The Globe and Mail alongside its 40 monopoly papers. Southam would keep its metropolitan dailies. The proposed editorial advisory committees were converted into voluntary boards.
Even this reduced measure never reached a vote. When Prime Minister Trudeau shuffled his cabinet in August 1983, Fleming was dropped from the ministry, and the proposed legislation died on the Order Paper.
Two months later, the final judicial attempt to hold the newspaper chains accountable ended in court. In October 1983, the Ontario Supreme Court handed down its verdict in R. v. Southam Inc. and Thomson Newspapers Ltd., dismissing criminal conspiracy and monopoly charges brought under the Combines Investigation Act over the Black Wednesday closures.
Justice Colin Anderson ruled that while Thomson and Southam had conducted extensive negotiations before August 27, 1980, the Crown had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the simultaneous market closures were the result of an unlawful agreement rather than separate commercial decisions. Anderson concluded that under Canadian law, closing an unprofitable newspaper was not a criminal offence, and acquiring a monopoly was not illegal unless the Crown could prove direct detriment to the public through excessive advertising rates.
The acquittal confirmed what the Kent Commission had concluded two years earlier: Canada's existing competition statutes could not restrain corporate press concentration.
The consequences of Ottawa's inaction unfolded over the decades that followed. Having avoided structural regulation in 1981, Canadian newspaper chains continued to merge and consolidate. The Thomson chain eventually sold its regional papers to Conrad Black's Hollinger, which in turn sold them to the Asper family's Canwest, before the properties were absorbed into Postmedia Network.
Each subsequent wave of corporate ownership added heavier debt loads and reduced newsroom staffing. The independent local press that Tom Kent sought to protect did not vanish solely from technological change; it was consolidated by financial holding companies that treated community dailies as revenue streams for distant corporate balance sheets.
The warning issued by the Kent Commission in the summer of 1981 remains a landmark record of Canadian media policy: when a democracy leaves the public's right to know to corporate balance sheets, local newsrooms are eventually hollowed out from within.
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Source Documents
Royal Commission on Newspapers. (1981, July). Royal Commission on Newspapers (Cat. No. Z1-1980/1E-PDF). Chairman: Tom Kent. Commissioners: Borden Spears, Laurent Picard. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada.
I remember the Kent Commission, although I was not much interested in it at the time. I probably read the Toronto Star and checked out the "Sunshine Girl", but wasn't much concerned about corporate concentration although we can see the horrific results in the PostMedia network today.
As a student in CEGEP in 1973 I had no idea how lucky I was to enjoy the two weeklies (West Island News & Chronical & the North Shore News) plus our dailies (Montreal Star & the Gazette).
Like Joni Mitchell sang … you don’t know what you’ve got until …
Thank you for this bit of history, explained, Mike