Global Surrey

Surrey's history reaches far beyond the municipality's borders. From Tsawwassen First Nation veterans of the First World War to Japanese strawberry farmers, and from German barons to Chinese mill workers and Sikh oyster farmers, a dizzying array of people, ideas, objects, and animals connect the community's past to faraway places. We invite you to discover the exciting, and sometimes difficult, stories of Global Surrey.

This app is an ongoing digital history project produced and edited by students in the History Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), working in close partnership with the City of Surrey Archives. All projects are based on original archival research. Using naval diaries, family photograph albums, old letters, and even scraps of historical newspapers, we unveil the hidden histories of Surrey’s connected past. Our work has been generously supported by a KPU Faculty of Arts FAEAF grant.