National Doughnut Day honours brave 'lassies' in WWI

Salvation Army is honouring the brave 'lassies' that boosted morale for the soldiers during WWI with National Doughnut Day. 

"Doughnut Day is national but it's also celebrated all over the world," says Kristin Marand, the Marketing and Communications Specialist at the Salvation Army in Winnipeg. "Before we talk about how it became a national day you have to understand the doughnut lassies in the First World War."

In 1917, on the front lines of WWI in France, the soldiers didn't have high hopes for anything. 

"The Salvation Army concluded that the soldiers could use a moral boost. They established canteens and social centres."

Soldiers came to the huts and got fresh baked goods, and writing supplies to send letters home and get their uniforms mended. 

"They set up these huts in bombed-out or abandoned buildings. Two very innovative lassies decided they were going to start frying doughnuts in soldiers' helmets. This became such a big hit that the U.S. soldiers were also known as doughboys. The doughnut lassies are even credited with, not only boosting the soldiers' morale and bringing them a taste of home but also popularizing doughnuts in the U.S."

In 1938 the Salvation Army in Chicago thought about honouring the doughnut lassies in a more tangible way, and that's when they came up with National Doughnut Day. 

"We still deliver doughnuts to a lot of frontline workers. Not only that, the doughnut has come to represent the wide range of social services like shelter, meal, emergency disaster relief, and life skills development that the Salvation Army still provides."