Skip to content

Christmas past

The Surrey Archives share nostalgic photos of the holiday season from the last several decades.
91983surreyw-choirboys
Three choir boys sing Christmas carols in Surrey in 1960.


Two weeks ago, on a whim, staff at the Surrey Archives decided to gather vintage images for a slide show to show at their Christmas party.

With their recently updated computer database, the search word – Christmas – turned up “a huge slough of images,” says reference specialist Ryan Gallagher.

As reference assistant Fiona Corr gathered the photos, Gallagher got to work organizing the images of local Yuletide activities from the last century.

The collection of mostly black-and-white images includes Christmas parties, dinners, Christmas tree lots, present-openings and kids with Santa throughout Surrey’s communities.

The majority of the photos are from the 1960s, part of the Surrey Leader collection, which was recently scanned and digitized.

“It’s one of the most important archives we have,” says Gallagher.

Photo: Job's Daughters' Christmas tree lot in Whalley in 1963.

Other Christmas photos the Archives have shared with the public here are from Stan McKinnon and Bill Hastings collections.

Thousands of images among the Surrey Archive’s collection of more than 100,000 photos are searchable online at www.surrey.ca/heritage

The Surrey Archives are located at 17671 56 Ave. For more information, call 604-502-6459 or email archives@surrey.ca

bjoseph@surreyleader.com