Connecting with Community
The real meaning behind Community League Day
DAVID BERRY, EFCL
As organizations, Edmonton’s community leagues aren’t really ones to draw attention to themselves. Leagues and the people who run them are all about supporting others. Whether it’s maintaining the neighbourhood rink that welcomes everyone with a pair of skates (and has some you can borrow if you need), or giving local greenthumbs a place to swap seeds and stories, leagues are fulfilling their highest purpose when they’re allowing people to reach higher, see further, and do more than they would alone.
It shouldn’t be any surprise that Community League Day (September 21) is less about self-congratulations, and more about shaking hands and seeing new faces. Though the parties themselves are as diverse as the neighbourhoods they live in, every celebration is ultimately about the heart of everything a community league does: bringing people together.
“We always have some amazing and creative people at our leagues who come up with ways to get their community engaged, but whether it’s a sports tournament or celebrating a hall renovation or just eating together, it’s the conversations that happen in between everything that really make the day worthwhile,” explains Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues (EFCL) executive director Laura Cunningham-Shpeley. As the umbrella organization for Edmonton’s 163 community leagues, the EFCL helps support the dozens of parties that take place on Community League Day.
“Neighbours make neighbourhoods, and making good neighbours so often starts with just getting out in the community and having a great experience together,” says Cunningham-Shpeley.
Though the community league movement has more than a century of history in Edmonton, the idea of setting aside a day just to celebrate the work of the leagues is a relatively recent invention — albeit one inspired by that history. Organizing city-wide events has almost always been a function of the EFCL: Beginning with amateur sports tournaments in the 1930s, it extended everywhere from beauty pageants, to soap box races, and even community league parades in the heydays of the 1950s and 1960s. Over the years, much of that had fallen by the wayside, either because the events grew enough to be taken over by dedicated organizations or, as some argued, the community spirit just wasn’t what it used to be.
Enter Community League Day in 2006. Combining the best of the neighbourhood-driven ethos that has made leagues such an integral part of their communities with Edmonton’s well-known love of a city-wide celebration, the day was designed to remind us that even when we’re in different corners of the city, ultimately we’re all still in this together. As it’s grown into a staple of the city calendar — and the most important membership drive for leagues city-wide — it’s become proof that coming together never really goes out of style.
“We have had mayors come out of the community league movement, councillors, MLAs and a whole lot of community builders of all stripes, and they all started that journey just by getting to know the people who lived in their community,” says Cunningham-Shpeley. “There’s so much we can accomplish just by meeting each other and having some fun together.”
You can find out what your League has planned for Community League Day by visiting the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues website (efcl.org).