The last Battle of Alberta was in 1991. Here's how Calgary is different — and how it remains the same

It was a shot that bounced off a pad, sailing past Calgary Flames goaltender Mike Vernon, that brought the 1991 dream to an end. 

It was, of course, impossible to know it would end that way. A little more than a month prior, on March 4, 1991, Vernon was in the middle of outdueling Montreal Canadiens goaltender Patrick Roy.

That same night, a still relatively unknown grunge trio known as Nirvana (possibly undersold on the poster only as being "from Seattle") would play its first show in Calgary at the Westward Club, months before they would release Smells Like Teen Spiritand reach superstardom.

At that time, Catherine Ford was a columnist based at the Calgary Herald, trying to kick her smoking habit and consequently running into serious nicotine withdrawals.

"Let me put it this way," Ford said. "Not that I remember a lot of the 1990s, but 1991 was a particularly, shall we say, efficacious year."

Efficacious — productive and constructive — not just because Ford would eventually go on to dump her cigarettes, but also because she began to see the signs of a city in transition.

She watched as the city became one that was more culturally diverse, one that saw booms (and busts) and transformations in its downtown, a city that saw its homogenous political landscape begin to gradually evolve into something more complicated.

Still, headlines from the Calgary Herald from that year demonstrate that while some things change, others seem more familiar to the Calgary of today.

Take Ald. Barb Scott's efforts in the Jan. 21, 1991, edition to convert empty buildings in downtown Calgary to housing in order to serve the city's needy.

Or, a story from the Feb. 1 edition, which reported on high prices at the pump brought on by an ongoing