MONTREAL – That’s about the extent of my French, folks, even though I took it right through high school, have relatives here and have been here many, many times.

Just arrived in La Belle Province in advance of Wednesday’s Blue Bomber and Alouette press conferences. Interestingly, both teams have blown off the traditional walk-through practice — the Bombers because getting access to Molson Stadium is difficult; the Als because they are working on a very short week after losing to the Toronto Argonauts in The Big Smoke on Saturday.

The big sporting news in Montreal this week is the Rogers Cup women’s tennis tournament at Uniprix Stadium. Haven’t seen any of the athletes yet, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled.

Looking forward to seeing the revamped Molson Stadium so many have been buzzing about. Over the winter a 5,000-seat upper deck was added to one of the grandstands and the word around the CFL is the extra seats have made the cozy building one of the loudest in the CFL.

Here’s a great historical video look at the facility, courtesy The Montreal Gazette.

http://alsinsideout.com/videos/video-molson-stadium-revamp/

The big news in Bomberland today was the decision to go with Justin Palardy as the team’s placekicker this week over Warren Kean. Their placekicking numbers were apparently a toss up, but the coaches opted to go with Palardy because of his punting ability. Strangely, the team didn’t ask either one to punt, but Palardy did have a 42.1-yard average for Hamilton through the first few games this year.

We hope to have video clips from the press conferences tomorrow, so be sure to check back to the blog during the day.