Surreyਸਰੀ

History

Surrey sits on the south bank of the Fraser River, on the shared territories of the Katzie, Kwantlen and Semiahmoo peoples. The first non-Indigenous settlements grew near Crescent Beach and Brownsville in the 1860s, and the municipality was incorporated in 1879 — named by an English settler, H.J. Brewer, for his native county of Surrey in England.

The Pattullo Bridge, opened in 1937, tied Surrey to New Westminster and opened the door to growth. In the post-war 1950s, North Surrey filled with single-family homes as commuters settled within reach of Vancouver and Burnaby. In the 1980s and 1990s, immigration — especially from Asia — transformed the municipality, and Surrey received city status in 1993.

A Punjabi city in Canada

Today Surrey is the heart of the Punjabi diaspora in Canada. The 2021 census counted 568,322 residents, making it British Columbia's second-largest city and the eleventh-largest in Canada. Nearly 38 per cent reported South Asian heritage, and 27.4 per cent identified as Sikh — proportionally the largest Sikh population of any Canadian census subdivision.

Surrey's Punjabi character deepened in the 1990s, when rising rents pushed families and businesses out of Vancouver's Punjabi Market and into Newton and Whalley, where South Asians are now the majority. Just over half of residents do not speak English as a first language, and Punjabi-language media — including ReD-FM, Radio India and the Asian Journal newspaper — is based in the city.

Surrey is home to Canada's first kabaddi-specific stadium, and its cricket pitches and sports fields reflect the community's imprint on the city.

Vaisakhi in Surrey

Every April, Surrey hosts the largest Vaisakhi nagar kirtan outside India. The parade grew from about 100,000 attendees in 2008 to more than 500,000 in 2019, when it set a new attendance record. Floats, gatka displays and free langar line the route as hundreds of thousands gather — a scale matched nowhere else in the diaspora.

For many Punjabis abroad, Surrey's Vaisakhi is the defining celebration of the year, drawing visitors from across North America.

Gurdwaras and community life

Gurdwaras anchor Sikh life across the city. Gurdwara Dukh Nivaran Sahib, the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Newton — which also runs a Punjabi school along with kirtan and gatka programs for youth — the Gurdwara Sahib Brookside and the Gurdwara Guru Teg Bahadur Sahib are among the city's many congregations, each serving langar and running community programs through the week.

Surrey today

Surrey keeps growing: a 2024 estimate put the population at 700,459, and the city has long been projected to overtake Vancouver as British Columbia's most populous city. Downtown Surrey, rising in Whalley around Surrey Central station, is becoming Metro Vancouver's second downtown core, while more than a quarter of the city's land remains protected in the Agricultural Land Reserve.

Nicknamed the “City of Parks,” Surrey pairs suburban sprawl with one of the most visible Punjabi public cultures in the world — a city where a nagar kirtan can draw half a million people.