Surrey, B.C.

Surrey is a city in British Columbia, Canada. It is located south of the Fraser River on the Canada–United States border. It is a member municipality of the Metro Vancouver regional district and metropolitan area. Mainly a suburban city, Surrey is the province's second-largest by population after Vancouver and the third-largest by area after Abbotsford and Prince George. Seven neighbourhoods in Surrey are designated town centres: Cloverdale, Fleetwood, Guildford, Newton, South Surrey, and City Centre encompassed by Whalley.

History

Surrey was incorporated in 1879, and encompasses land formerly home to a number of Halqemeylem-speaking indigenous groups, including the Semiahmoo, Katzie, and the Kwantlen peoples. When Englishman H.J. Brewer looked across the Fraser River from New Westminster and saw it was reminiscent of his native County of Surrey in England, the settlement of Surrey was placed on the map. The area then comprised forests of Douglas fir, fir, red cedar, hemlock, blackberry bushes, and cranberry bogs. A portion of present-day Whalley (named after Harry Whalley, who owned and operated a gas bar at the bend in King George Blvd, (formerly King George Highway) at 108 Avenue, "Whalley's Corner") was used as a burial ground by the Kwantlen (or Qw'ontl'en) Nation.

Settlers arrived first in Cloverdale and parts of South Surrey, mostly to farm, fish, harvest oysters, or set up small stores. Once the Pattullo Bridge was erected in 1937, the way was open for Surrey to expand. In the post-war 1950s, North Surrey's neighbourhoods filled with single-family homes and Surrey (not yet a city) became a bedroom community, absorbing commuters who worked in Burnaby or Vancouver.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the city witnessed unprecedented growth, as people from different parts of Canada and the world, particularly Asia, began to make the municipality their home. In 2013, it was projected to surpass the city of Vancouver as the most populous city in BC within the following 10 to 12 years.

Geography

The city is characterized by low population density urban sprawl, typical of North American cities, which includes areas of residential housing, light industry and commercial centres and is prone to strip development and malls. Approximately or 27 percent of the land area is designated as part of the Agricultural Land Reserve and can only be used for farming. The city is mostly hills and flatland, with most of the flatland in Tynehead, Hazelmere, the south of Cloverdale, and Colebrook.

Climate

Surrey has an oceanic climate (Cfb) typical of the inter-coastal Pacific Northwest: rainy, wet winters, often with heavy rainfall lasting into early spring. Winters are chilly but not frigid, summers are mild and sunny, and autumns are cool and cloudy.

Demographics

In the 2021 Canadian census conducted by Statistics Canada, Surrey had a population of 568,322 living in 185,671 of its 195,098 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 517,887. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Surrey is the 11th largest city in Canada, and is also the fifth-largest city in Western Canada (after Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver). Surrey forms an integral part of Metro Vancouver as it is the largest city in the region by land area, albeit while also serving as the secondary economic core of the metropolitan area. When combined with the City of Vancouver, both cities account for nearly 50 percent of the region's population. In recent years, a rapidly expanding urban core in Downtown Surrey, located in Whalley has transformed the area into the secondary downtown core in Metro Vancouver.

Ethnicity

Within the City of Surrey itself feature many neighbourhoods including City Centre, Whalley, Newton, Guildford, Fleetwood, Cloverdale and South Surrey. Each neighbourhood is unique and includes ethnically diverse populations. While Europeans and South Asians can be found in large numbers across the city, areas which house a large proportion of the former include South Surrey (72 percent) and Cloverdale (69 percent), with Newton (58 percent) and Whalley (51 percent) being home to large numbers of the latter.

Immigration to Surrey has drastically increased since the 1980s; this has created a more ethnically and linguistically diverse city. 52 percent do not speak English as their first language, while approximately 38 percent of the city's inhabitants are of South Asian heritage. Beginning in the 1990s, an influx of South Asians began moving to the city from the Punjabi Market neighbourhood of South Vancouver due to rising housing costs and rapidly increasing rent costs for businesses. The outflow of these residents combined with increased immigration from the Indian Subcontinent therefore established in Surrey one of the largest concentrations of South Asian residents in North America.

Other significant groups which reside in the city include East Asians (10.9 percent) and Southeast Asians (9.7 percent). Forming nearly 2.3 percent of the total population, the Black community of Surrey is small, though the city is home to the largest Black population in British Columbia; roughly 21 percent of the entire Black population of the province resides in Surrey. Similar to most cities across English-speaking Canada, a large majority (64 percent) of Surrey residents of European heritage can trace their roots to the British Isles.

Religion

Proportionally, Surrey has the largest Sikh population percentage (27.4 percent) out of all subdivisions in Canada.

As of 2021, the top five most reported religious affiliations in Surrey were Christianity (170,115 or 30.2 percent), Irreligion (161,860 or 28.6 percent), Sikhism (154,415 or 27.4 percent), Islam (31,095 or 5.5 percent), and Hinduism (30,455 or 5.4 percent).

Language

Economic indicators

As of 2010, Surrey had the highest median family income of , while the BC provincial median was $71,660, and the national median was $74,540. The average family income was $85,765. South Surrey area had the highest average household income of all six town centres in Surrey, with an average of $86,824 as of 2010. Median household income was also high at $62,960. South Surrey's neighbourhood of Rosemary Heights is the richest in Surrey and throughout the Metro Vancouver area, with a median income more than twice the regional average.

As of 2010, the median household income of Surrey was $67,702 (versus the national median of $76,437), where 29.4 percent of households in Surrey earned a household total income of $100,000 or more, which is above the national average of 25.9 percent.

Economy

Surrey is one of the largest industrial centres within British Columbia, with a burgeoning high technology, clean energy, advanced manufacturing, health, education, agriculture, and arts sector.

Increase in filming activity in Surrey resulted in 189 productions, including 15 at the city hall plaza, in 2017.

In 2018, Surrey opened a $68 million biofuel facility, the first in North America.

There were six employers in Surrey in 2017 each with more than 1,000 staff across BC: Fraser Health with 25,000; School District 36 with 10,560; City of Surrey with 3,400; Coast Capital Savings with 1,738; Starline Windows Group with 1,400; Kwantlen Polytechnic University with 1,332.

Agriculture

Farming has strongly been attached to the economic well-being of Surrey, as the city of Surrey itself fostered and cemented a robust culture of farming. Approximately a third of Surrey's land is preserved and designated as farmland that is utilized for the local production of food to cater the city's growing population as well as increasing employment opportunities via the creation of local jobs. Agriculture continues to invigorate Surrey's economy employing 3300 people or 1.6 percent of Surrey's overall labour force. Manufacturing is also a highly diversified sector where products are produced for developed and emerging industries that range from the cutting of lumber for various BC logging firms to constructing wind turbines as many Surrey-based environmental firms are capitalizing on the city's initiatives for the clean energy sector.

Health care

The health sector makes a significant contribution to Surrey's economy. Surrey is home to almost 900 health-related businesses where major focuses in several life science sub-sectors that include infectious diseases, marine bio-science, neuroscience, oncology and regenerative medicine. Surrey Memorial Hospital is the second largest employer in the City of Surrey with an annual operating budget of $149.2million while the health care organization, Fraser Health employs more than 4,100 people and an additional 350 active physicians at SMH. Due to population growth in the region, a new hospital in Surrey is planned to be built in Cloverdale; it is projected to be completed in 2026.

Technology

Although not as large as Vancouver's technology sector, Surrey also has an emerging tech sector with a highly anticipated incubator that will potentially act as a base to jump-start ideas into various start-up companies from local innovators, inventors, investors and entrepreneurs.

Government and politics

Surrey is governed by the elected Surrey City Council comprising a mayor and eight councillors. As of the October 15, 2022, election, the mayor is Brenda Locke and city councillors are Linda Annis, Harry Bains, Mike Bose, Doug Elford, Gordon Hepner, Pardeep Kooner, Mandeep Nagra, and Rob Stutt.

In the 2020 provincial election, the BC NDP kept at least their previously six elected MLAs (potentially seven), while the number of MLAs for the BC Liberals will have between two and three.

In 2004, when Gurmant Grewal's wife Nina was elected to parliament, they became the first married couple to serve Canadian parliament concurrently. Following the 2015 federal election, the Liberal Party of Canada won three of Surrey's four seats in the House of Commons of Canada. Conservative MP Dianne Watts resigned her South Surrey—White Rock seat in 2017 to compete for the leadership of the BC Liberal Party. In the subsequent 2017 by-election, the Liberal candidate Gordie Hogg defeated former Conservative MP and federal cabinet minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay.

Culture

Attractions

The Museum of Surrey is affiliated with CMA, CHIN, and Virtual Museum of Canada. It reopened as the Museum of Surrey on September 29, 2018, after a renovation which added to the previous building.

Surrey Art Gallery is the second largest public art museum in the Metro Vancouver region. It opened on September 13, 1975.

The historic Surrey Municipal Hall complex includes the Cenotaph in Heritage Square, the Surrey Museum, and Cloverdale Library. The Surrey City Centre Public Library located at Whalley / City Centre is the second largest library in terms of size in Metro Vancouver.

"REMEMBRANCE" by André Gauthier in Heritage Square, is an oversized bronze statue depicting a World War I kneeling soldier, helmet in hand, in remembrance of his fallen comrades.

Events

Attracting 15,000 people every February since 2004, WinterFest is a day of live music, sporting activities, food, and fireworks, held at the Central City Plaza.

Since 1888, the town centre of Cloverdale has hosted the annual Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair at the Cloverdale Fairgrounds every May long weekend. The Fair is Canada's second largest rodeo, and it features of family-oriented entertainment including agricultural/horticultural exhibits, a western tradeshow, parade, community stages, and the Pacific Northwest Firefighter Combat Challenge.

Every year on April 13, the Sikh community celebrates Vaisakhi, which often includes a ''nagar kirtan'', or parade, and free food is often handed out. It is the largest Vaisakhi parade outside India, growing from 100,000 attendees in 2008 to over 500,000 in 2019.

Every October since 1991, Surrey has hosted the Surrey International Writers' Conference. This event brings established writers, agents, editors and publishers from all over the world to the Comfort Inn & Suites Surrey Hotel and Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel in Guildford Town Centre.

There are presently three live theatre venues in the City of Surrey in British Columbia as of January 2013: the Bell Centre for Performing Arts, the Chandos Pattison Auditorium and the Surrey Arts Centre.

One of the lesser-known events in Surrey is the annual Nicomekl River Race. Every year, in early June, teams of four meet at Nicomekl Park in Langley, British Columbia to begin the race. Unlike most traditional boat races, the Nicomekl River Race requires that all boats be made by the participants. The racecourse extends from Nicomekl Park to Blackie Spit Park at Crescent Beach. The first team to reach the mouth of the river is awarded a prize of $1,000. Additional prizes are awarded to the most creative boat and costume. All proceeds go towards the BC Cancer society.

News media

In addition to news media from Vancouver, the community is served by '' The Surrey Now-Leader'' newspaper, and the ''Peace Arch News'' newspaper (for South Surrey). The city is also home to South Asian Broadcasting's ethnic radio station ReD-FM and the ''Asian Journal'' newspaper.

The first Surrey-based English-language radio station, My Surrey FM 107.7 FM, was licensed by the CRTC in 2014 and is now Pulse FM 107.7 reporting about South of the Fraser news. Radio India, another Indo-Canadian radio station, has its offices in Surrey.

Sports and recreation

Every summer, Surrey hosts the Canada Cup International Women's Fastpitch Tournament. It began in 1993 as an international women's fastpitch developmental softball tournament to help teams prepare for the Olympics by facing top-calibre competition. The event continues to be a fan favourite with gate attendance reaching 93,000 for the nine-day tournament in 2004.

The BCHL Surrey Eagles hockey team plays at the South Surrey Arena in Surrey. The Eagles won the BCHL championship, the Fred Page Cup, in 1997, 1998, 2005, 2013 and 2024; the western championship, the Doyle Cup, in 1997 and 1998; and the national championship, the Royal Bank Cup, in 1998.

Surrey hosted the Canadian national qualifying tournament in 2006, and sends a local team to compete for a spot in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Surrey is also home to Canada's first kabaddi-specific stadium.

Although not considered a sport, the globally acclaimed dance company known as "Brotherhood" won gold trophies at the World Hip Hop Dance Championships in 2013 and 2014 for the varsity and adult divisions. The affiliated dance production team known as "PraiseTEAM" had taken home the silver trophy at the world finals in 2013 as well. Both dance companies are from Surrey.

Cricket is also played in Surrey. There are more than 85 teams registered with British Columbia Mainland Cricket League. There are more than 20 cricket pitches across Surrey, though the only turf pitch is in West Newton.

Other notable sporting events held by Surrey include:
* 2016 Women's Softball World Championship

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