Where to Stay in Surrey, British Columbia

What is Surrey known for?

Seven neighbourhoods carry the town centre designation, among them Cloverdale, Fleetwood, Guildford, Newton, South Surrey and the City Centre encompassed by Whalley, and the distance between them is what strikes a visitor first. The Peace Arch stands on the border. Redwood Park and the Museum of Surrey account for the best-known public places in the city, and the Clova Theatre keeps an older Cloverdale street in use.

What are the main landmarks in Surrey?

The Peace Arch is the one everyone knows. It stands on the Canada-United States border at the southern end of the city, and it draws people who had no other reason to come to Surrey at all. Cloverdale supplies most of the rest.

Clova Theatre, Cloverdale United Church and Cloverdale Elementary School are the old town-centre buildings still in use, and Anderson Cabin is on the register as well. The Museum of Surrey and The Black Arts Centre carry the civic and cultural side. Redwood Park is the green one.

What is the history of Surrey?

Surrey's record begins in 1879. The municipality was drawn across the ground south of the Fraser River, running down to the line that became the Canada-United States border, and for its first decades it was farmland rather than anything a visitor would have called a city. Anderson Cabin survives from then.

Cloverdale holds most of what else is left of that century, since Cloverdale United Church, Cloverdale Elementary School and the Clova Theatre all stand within the one old centre. The Peace Arch changed the southern end. Built at the crossing between Canada and the United States, it gave Surrey a monument long before the city had anything resembling a skyline.

Vancouver did the rest. As the Metro Vancouver regional district filled in, Surrey absorbed the overflow and grew into the province's second-largest city after Vancouver and its third-largest by area behind Abbotsford and Prince George, mostly working-class, with a sizeable belt of factories and warehouses alongside the housing. Growth arrived in pieces.

Seven neighbourhoods were designated town centres rather than one downtown, which is why Guildford, Newton, Fleetwood, South Surrey and the City Centre inside Whalley each work as their own place, and why the Museum of Surrey and The Black Arts Centre matter to a city that never had a single middle.

Where is Surrey?

The Fraser River is the northern edge. Surrey holds the ground between that river and the Canada-United States border, roughly 316 square kilometres of it, which makes the city the largest by land area in the Lower Mainland and the third-largest in British Columbia behind Abbotsford and Prince George. Nothing about it is compact.

Vancouver sits across the Fraser River inside the same Metro Vancouver regional district, and the designated centres at Cloverdale, Fleetwood, Guildford, Newton, South Surrey and Whalley are spread far enough apart to function as separate towns.

What is the climate of Surrey?

The Fraser River lowland sets the terms. Surrey lies in the same mild temperate band as the rest of the Lower Mainland, near enough to the coast that its winters run wet rather than hard and its summers stop short of extremes. Redwood Park shows the effect.

Trees hold their ground through the year there, and the green kept between the town centres is what the coastal air pays for.

How do you get to Surrey?

Most arrivals come from Vancouver. Bridges over the Fraser River bring traffic down out of Metro Vancouver into Whalley and the City Centre, which is the part of Surrey where moving around without a car is actually possible. The Peace Arch crossing does the other half, taking everything that comes up from the United States into South Surrey, and from there the road runs on through Newton and Cloverdale toward the river again.

Guildford and Fleetwood sit off that line.