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Montreal Alouettes



         


The Montreal Alouettes (French, Alouettes de Montréal) is a Canadian Football League team based in Montreal, Quebec. This article also covers the Montreal Concordes and the Baltimore Stallions, two closely related teams.

Founded: 1994 as the Baltimore Stallions, but earlier teams of same name existed from 1946 to 1981 and 1982 to 1987. Known as Montreal Concordes 1982 to 1986.
Formerly known as: Baltimore Football Club 1994, Baltimore Stallions 1995
Home stadium: McGill Molson Stadium for regular season, Olympic Stadium for playoffs
Uniform colours: Blue, red and silver
Helmet design: Silver background with a blue "A" and a charging lark holding a football
Eastern championships: 14 -- 1949, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1970, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1994, 2000, 2002, 2003
Southern championship: 1 -- 1995
Grey Cups: 6 -- 1949, 1970, 1974, 1977, 1995, 2002
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Franchise history

The Alouettes were first formed in 1946. They named themselves after the famous work song "Alouette" (about plucking various parts of a lark), which has become a light-hearted symbol of the Quebecois. (Similarly the RCAF's 425 Bomber Squadron, mostly Quebecois, during the Second World War assumed the lark as its badge and the motto "Je te plumerai" -- I shall pluck you.)

The Montreal Alouettes folded after the 1981 season and were replaced by a new Montreal team, the Concordes, in 1982. In 1986 the Concordes became the Alouettes to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the earlier team's formation. They folded just after the start of the 1987 season, and the league had to scramble to realign the divisions and rewrite the schedule. Montreal went without professional football for nine years, except for the short-lived Montreal Machine of the World League of American Football.

The Baltimore Stallions were the most successful United States–based Canadian Football League team. They had fan support in Baltimore, Maryland. They played in the 1994 Grey Cup their first season and won the 1995 Grey Cup.

They had originally planned to name the team the Baltimore CFL Colts, but the NFL sued and for their first season were called the Baltimore Football Club. The owner of the team, Jim Speros, felt that if the team couldn't use the Colts nickname then they were better off with no nickname at all, until the Canadian media started calling the team the "No Namers", which prompted Speros to adopt the name Stallions in 1995. The return of the NFL to Baltimore led the team to relocate to Montreal in 1996, where they became the Montreal Alouettes.

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Players of note

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Canadian Football Hall of Famers

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Current stars

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