In the good old days in Alberta, going back to 1904 or 1905, people identified with a certain neighbourhood. Mine, which is Inglewood, but also Westmount and Garneau, are different communities that adopted a name to identify themselves. The people said they wanted to have their own community identity. So they took over the funding for these leagues. Over the years, they created community leagues and managed facilities and community halls. Some community leagues have lovely facilities with community gardens and so on.
In my own riding, there are 26 community leagues, and there are 160 in the whole city.