Surreyਸਰੀ

Surrey, British Columbia, is the Surrey BC Punjabi heartland: a Metro Vancouver city of 568,322 people in 2021, south of the Fraser River on the United States border, where 37.8 percent of residents are South Asian, 27.4 percent are Sikh, and Punjabi is the mother tongue of 128,305 people.

Where is Surrey, Canada?

Surrey is in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, on the south bank of the Fraser River, with the Canada to United States border along its southern edge. Vancouver, the nearest big city, sits across the river to the north west, and Surrey is the largest city in Metro Vancouver by land area, at 316.11 square kilometres in the 2021 census. It is British Columbia's second-largest city by population, after Vancouver, and the eleventh-largest in Canada.

The city is not one centre but a family of town centres: Cloverdale, Fleetwood, Guildford, Newton, South Surrey, and City Centre, which sits inside the older Whalley district. Newton is the most crowded of them and the city's Punjabi heart, while City Centre, around Surrey Central and King George SkyTrain stations, is growing into Metro Vancouver's second downtown core, with Surrey City Hall, a Simon Fraser University campus and towers rising over Holland Park. Surrey is nicknamed the City of Parks: local guides count more than 250 parks and more than 300 kilometres of trails, from Bear Creek Park to Crescent Beach in South Surrey.

From municipality to city: a short history

Surrey stands on the shared territories of the Katzie, Kwantlen and Semiahmoo peoples, whose communities long predate the city. The first settler trail, the Kennedy Trail, was cut in 1861, and farming settlements grew near Crescent Beach, Brownsville and Cloverdale. The municipality was incorporated on 10 November 1879 and took its name from the county of Surrey in England, which the settler H. J. Brewer thought the land across the Fraser resembled.

The Pattullo Bridge, opened in 1937, tied Surrey to New Westminster and opened the way to growth. After the Second World War, North Surrey filled with single-family homes and the municipality became a bedroom community for people working in Burnaby and Vancouver. Immigration in the 1980s and 1990s, much of it from Asia, changed the city again, and on 11 September 1993 Surrey received city status. Growth has not slowed since: the census counted 347,825 people in 2001, 468,251 in 2011 and 568,322 in 2021.

Why do so many Punjabis live in Surrey?

So many Punjabis live in Surrey because an established community, family networks and room to grow pulled newcomers here, and each generation made the next move easier. Immigration lifted the South Asian share of the city through the 1980s and 1990s, and in the 1990s many families and businesses left Vancouver's Punjabi Market as rents rose there and resettled in Newton and Whalley, building one of the largest South Asian concentrations in North America.

The 2021 census gives the scale. Of 568,322 residents, up 9.7 percent from 517,887 in 2016, some 212,680 people, or 37.8 percent, were South Asian. Sikhs numbered 154,415, or 27.4 percent, the highest Sikh share of any census subdivision in Canada, ahead of Christianity at 30.2 percent and residents reporting no religion at 28.6 percent. Punjabi was the mother tongue of 128,305 people, 22.7 percent of the city, second only to English, and about half of all residents reported a first language other than English. In Newton, South Asians were already the majority, at 58 percent in 2019 figures cited for the city.

Vaisakhi in Surrey

Every April, Surrey hosts the Surrey Khalsa Day Vaisakhi Parade, a nagar kirtan that starts and ends at Gurdwara Sahib Dasmesh Darbar in Newton and is widely described as the largest Vaisakhi parade outside India. The city history records it growing from about 100,000 attendees in 2008 to more than 500,000 in 2019, figures reported at the time. Surrey's mayor reported that over half a million people attended in April 2023, and the parade organizers reported over 450,000 attendees in April 2026, the event's 27th year.

More than 20 decorated floats, Sikh schools and community groups take part, with the float carrying Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji at the heart of the procession. Gatka martial arts displays and devotional music line the route, and families and businesses hand out free food and drink to everyone, the practice of seva, selfless service, that defines the day. For Punjabis across Canada and the United States, the Surrey parade is the diaspora's biggest shared festival day.

Gurdwaras and community life

Gurdwaras anchor that community. The Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, on Scott Road at the Surrey end of the Delta border, began in 1973 when the Guru Nanak Sikh Society was formed to serve about 200 Sikh families in the Surrey and Delta area; its present building opened in 1981 and was for a time the largest gurdwara building in Greater Vancouver. Gurdwara Sahib Dasmesh Darbar in Newton hosts the Vaisakhi parade, and congregations across the city serve langar, the free community meal, through the week.

Punjabi public life in Surrey runs well beyond worship. Punjabi-language media based in the city includes the radio stations ReD-FM and Radio India and the Asian Journal newspaper. Surrey is home to Canada's first kabaddi-specific stadium, and its cricket scene counts more than 85 registered teams playing on more than 20 pitches. The city's best-known daughter in Punjabi cinema, the actress, director and producer Neeru Bajwa, was born in Surrey in 1980 to immigrant parents and schooled at L. A. Matheson Secondary School before leaving for Mumbai.

Work and growth today

Surrey is one of the largest industrial centres in British Columbia, with growing high technology, clean energy, advanced manufacturing, health, education, agriculture and arts sectors alongside its older farming base, and farmland is still protected inside the Agricultural Land Reserve. School District 36, the Surrey school district, is the largest public school district in British Columbia and the city's largest employer, and students study at Simon Fraser University's Surrey campus, open since 2002, and at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

The growth story is unfinished. Downtown Surrey, in Whalley, is being built up as Metro Vancouver's second downtown core, and Metro Vancouver's baseline projections, released in September 2025, estimate that Surrey will pass Vancouver's population by 2038. Whether or not the date holds, the direction is clear: a farming municipality incorporated in 1879 has become the city younger British Columbia is moving to.

Getting there

TransLink runs transit across Metro Vancouver, and the SkyTrain Expo Line ends in Surrey at King George station, serving four Surrey stations: Scott Road, Gateway, Surrey Central and King George, with through trains to downtown Vancouver. Frequent buses, including the R1 along King George Boulevard, link Newton, City Centre and Guildford. By road, the old Pattullo Bridge, opened on 15 November 1937, closed to vehicle traffic on 6 February 2026, and its replacement, the four-lane cable-stayed Riverview Bridge, opened the same month, carrying traffic between Surrey and New Westminster with separated walking and cycling paths. Vancouver International Airport is about 28 kilometres west, and Abbotsford International Airport about 24 kilometres east.