lost french spell checker and antidote grammar checker with new thunderbird updates

The latest updates of thunderbird seems to have undone some of the add-ons I was using which sucks. I'm a fan of TB and its community so by no means am I ungrateful, but frustrated since these tools are not longer working. I had french under my spelling that now disappeared. No biggy I found how to add it back but now it in't picking up some french words to correct them like it used to? Does that make sense? I'm pretty sure I recall to make sure use french canadian rather then french france for instance now I just realized the add on I had to antidote is gone as well.. I have no idea what to do about that... I've taken for granted these tools but now they are gone it sucks. I've seen new posts about people having trouble with the updates as in they fail. Does anyone else have issues more like mine? Any ideas about how to get a plugin like antidote back into thunderbird?