 On May 1 of that year, at the request of Archbishop Taché, two Grey Nuns opened the first Catholic school in Winnipeg, St. Mary’s Academy, to serve the English-speaking Catholics on the west side of the Red River across from St. Boniface.The Academy was located in a rented house on Victoria Street near the centre of population between the intersection of Portage and Main and The Forks, the junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers.The convent chapel also became home to St. Mary’s Catholic Church until August 1874, when a church was built at the corner of St. Mary Avenue and Hargrave.