Editing Catherine Doherty (section)

== Early life ==
Shortly before the turn of the century, Catherine was born in Nizhni Novgorod, Russia, to Theodore (Fyodor) and Emma (Thomson) Kolyschkine. Baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church, she received from her parents an upbringing permeated with the riches of Russian Orthodox spirituality as well as an openness to other religions, especially Catholicism.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Duquin |first=Lorene Hanley |title=They Called Her the Baroness |publisher=Alba House |year=1995 |isbn=0-8189-0753-3 |location=New York |pages=14, 18–20, 65}}</ref>

Catherine spent much of her childhood in countries where her father, a successful international insurance agent,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Doherty |first=Catherine |title=Catherine de Hueck Doherty: Essential Writings |publisher=Orbis |year=1970 |isbn=978-1-57075-824-9 |editor-last=Meconi |editor-first=David |location=Maryknoll, NY |pages=20}}</ref> had been posted. In Egypt she attended the convent school of the Sisters of Sion, where some of the key aspects of her spirituality were formed.<ref>Meconi, 24</ref> The family returned to St. Petersburg in 1910, and two years later, at the age of 15, Catherine married her first cousin, Baron Boris de Hueck (1889-1947).

At the outbreak of World War I, Catherine served as a nurse at the front, experiencing firsthand the horrors of war.<ref>Duquin, 33-37</ref> Returning to St. Petersburg and the Russian Revolution, she escaped with her husband to Finland, where they nearly met death at the hands of Bolshevik peasants. They served with the Allied army in Murmansk, and were evacuated to England in 1919. Later that year, in London, Catherine was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

The couple immigrated to Toronto, where Catherine gave birth to a son, George. To make ends meet, she took menial jobs, was eventually hired as a lecturer on the Chatauqua circuit, and in time became an executive with the Leigh-Emmerich Lecture Bureau in New York City.