Walker's ambitions stretched far beyond a single building. He allied himself with Klaw and Erlanger, the powerful New York theatrical syndicate that controlled access to Broadway's biggest productions. By positioning his chain of theatres along the railway route, Walker created the Red River Valley Theatre Circuit, funneling touring companies from New York through the Canadian prairies. The Walker Theatre sat at the heart of this network, a 2,000-seat jewel designed by Montreal architect Howard Colton Stone, who modeled it after Chicago's celebrated Auditorium by Adler and Sullivan. The ornate streetfront facade fronted a masonry cube of a building, three storeys tall, that retained many of its original interior features through decades of changing use. For its first quarter-century, the theatre brought the world to Winnipeg -- Shakespeare and opera, vaudeville and melodrama -- via the iron rails that were remaking the West.

The Walker Theatre was never just about entertainment. Its cavernous hall doubled as a gathering place for the political movements reshaping early-twentieth-century Canada. Labour organizers debated from its stage during Winnipeg's tumultuous years of worker activism. Most memorably, in January 1914, Nellie McClung and the Political Equality League staged a mock parliament on the Walker's stage, a satirical performance in which women played parliamentarians debating whether men should be granted the right to vote. McClung's devastating mimicry of Premier Rodmond Roblin brought the house down and became a landmark moment in the Canadian women's suffrage movement. The theatre that Walker built for Broadway spectacles had become a platform for social change -- a duality that would echo through the building's long life.

Live theatrical performances ended at the Walker in 1933, a casualty of the Great Depression and the rise of cinema. The building was converted into a movie theatre in 1945 and screened films until 1990. By then, the once-grand interior had suffered decades of neglect. Recognition came in stages: a Provincial Heritage Building designation in 1991, followed by federal status as a National Historic Site. But heritage plaques do not pay for repairs. In 2002, the theatre was renamed for Burton Cummings, the Winnipeg-born singer and keyboardist whose voice powered The Guess Who through hits like 'American Woman' and 'These Eyes.' Cummings, born in the city in 1947, became one of Canada's most successful rock musicians, and lending his name to the old Walker gave the building a fresh identity rooted in Winnipeg pride.

The renaming alone could not save a deteriorating structure. In May 2014, locally based True North Sports and Entertainment assumed management of the theatre and began critical repairs. A new board was formed, drawing members from True North, CentreVenture, Forks North Portage Partnership, and the original theatre board. By spring 2016, True North exercised its option to purchase the building outright. Today, the Burton Cummings Theatre hosts concerts, comedy, and -- in a nod to its earliest days of spectacle -- an annual professional wrestling event that harks back to the wrestling shows staged on its boards in the 1910s. The fireproof steel cage Corliss Powers Walker insisted upon more than a century ago still stands, a monument to one impresario's conviction that the Canadian prairie deserved nothing less than the best.