The 1960s.
A decade that brought us the space race, the Beatles, Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, a flag Canadians could call their very own, Dr. Strangelove, Bonanza, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Mr. Dressup, Muhammad Ali and the Over-the-Hill Gang, a.k.a. the most recent Toronto Maple Leafs team to win the Stanley Cup.
It was also the time the Calgary Stampeder Football Club came of age.
For one thing, 1960 was the year the Stamps abandoned Mewata Stadium — a facility that was considered by some as the worst park in the Canadian Football League — and moved into newly built McMahon Stadium. It was good riddance in more ways than one because by the time they settled into the new digs, the franchise’s exciting early years, which included a perfect championship season in 1948, were only a distant memory.
The Stamps failed to produced a single winning season during the 1950s but things changed almost immediately when Bobby Dobbs (pictured right) took over as head coach in 1961.
Dobbs led the Red and White to a modest 7-9 record during his first season at the helm, but the Stamps upended the Edmonton Eskimos in the two-game, total-point West semifinal for Calgary’s first post-season success since 1949.
The following year, the Stamps recorded their first winning season in 13 years and, with the 
exception of one small hiccup in 1966, the success spilled over into the early 1970s as Calgary would make three trips to the Grey Cup in four seasons and win the championship in 1971.
The winning tradition started by Dobbs was maintained by Jerry Williams and by Jim Duncan, who was hired in 1969 and was calling the shots when the Stampeders defeated the Toronto Argonauts in the 1971 Grey Cup.
From 1960-69, Calgary posted a 93-61-6 record — including three seasons in a four-year stretch when the Stamps recorded a 12-4 mark — and made the West final on no fewer than six occasions.
From a fashion standpoint, the decade in which go-go boots, miniskirts, bell-bottom jeans and tie-dye all became popular also brought us the Stampeders’ now-iconic white running-horse logo. Earlier in the 1960s, the Stamps’ look at various times included gold pants, a horseshoe-adorned helmet, and the duds the club will be wearing during Friday’s Retro Game against the Argonauts — red jerseys with white stripes and red helmets with white numbers on the sides.
The men wearing those different uniforms in the 1960s featured a galaxy of stars including a couple of CFL Most Outstanding Player winners — Lovell Coleman and Peter Liske. Other league award winners included fearsome defender Wayne Harris, super homegrown talents Tony Pajaczkowski, Harvey Wylie and Terry Evanshen (pictured) and a plethora of division all-stars in Earl Lunsford, Don Luzzi, Eagle Day, Pete Manning, Jim Dillard, Jim Furlong, Herm Harrison, Pat Holmes, Jerry Keeling, Larry Robinson, Frank Andruski, Roger Kramer, Bob Lueck, Dick Suderman, Lanny Boleski and John Helton.
>> Harris, Harrison and Keeling shone brightly in the ’60s