514 Area Code – Montreal, Quebec: Location, Time Zone & History

Montreal is the largest primarily French-speaking city in the Americas, and most of its residents are bilingual in French and English, a fact reflected in a numbering history that has repeatedly had to expand to keep pace with the island's density. Area code 514 was assigned in 1947 as one of North America's original area codes, initially covering the entire province of Quebec. A 1957 flash cut split off area code 819 for the middle of the province, and in 1998 the off-island suburbs and the Montérégie region split away as 450, leaving 514 to serve only the Island of Montreal and Île Perrot.

As the island's demand for numbers kept growing, the response shifted from splitting territory to overlaying it: area code 438 went into service in 2006, and a second overlay, 263, followed in 2022 under a CRTC decision, both layered over the same island footprint rather than dividing it further. Ten-digit local dialing became mandatory with the first overlay.

The Island of Montreal is also home to Westmount, Mont-Royal, Dorval, Lachine, Kirkland, and Pointe-Claire. Its economy spans aerospace, information technology and video game development, finance, pharmaceuticals, and fashion and design. Culturally, the city hosts the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the world's largest jazz festival, and Just for Laughs, the world's largest comedy festival, and was designated a UNESCO City of Design in 2006.