Early Life
Doherty was born Ekaterina Fyodorovna Kolyschkine (Екатерина Фёдоровна Колышкина) in Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire. Her parents, Fyodor and Emma Kolyschkine, belonged to the minor nobility and were devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church who had their child baptized in St. Petersburg on September 15, 1896. She was not baptized on the same day that she was born because her mother was worried she might get a disease as she had been born on a train. Schooled abroad due to her father's job, she and her family returned to St. Petersburg in 1910, where she was enrolled in the prestigious Princess Obolensky Academy. In 1912, aged 15, she made what turned out to be a disastrous marriage with her first cousin, Baron Boris de Hueck (1889–1947).
At the outbreak of World War I, Baroness de Hueck became a Red Cross nurse at the front, experiencing the horrors of battle firsthand. On her return to St. Petersburg, she and Boris barely escaped the turmoil of the Russian Revolution with their lives, nearly starving to death as refugees in Finland. Together they made their way to England, where Doherty was received into the Roman Catholic Church on November 27, 1919.
Emigrating to Canada with Boris, Doherty gave birth to their only child, George, in Toronto in 1921. To make ends meet, she took various jobs, eventually becoming a lecturer, travelling across North America.
Read more about this topic: Catherine Doherty
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