The Sea Captain, the Strongman & the City of Surrey — with Sukh Johal

The Sea Captain is the newly unveiled public art piece, held aloft from the ceiling of the newly upgraded Surrey Central SkyTrain station on Expo Line. It’s also, perhaps, an apt metaphor for themes covered in this episode.

Themes like encounters with colonialism, and the different forms they can take. Figuring out how different peoples live together in one place.

Gord explores these, and many other themes related to culture, settlement, and “the Canadian experiment”, in his wide-ranging discussion with Sukh Johal.

Johal, a Surrey-based realtor and passionate advocate for slower, safer communities and responsible land use, tells us a story that begins in an unexpected corner of the British Commonwealth. We get a peek into Sikh culture, the impact of change on Surrey’s urban youth in the ’90s, and today’s South Asian culture that is largely responsible, over the last 25 years, for buoying Surrey into second place amongst BC’s most populous cities. (In terms of both population and area, it’s like two-and-a-half Richmonds.)

There’s never been a discussion like this before on Price Tags. The respect, the ‘just so’ flattery, the crisp enunciation — like a true politician. (Sukh, not Gord.)

And what about the Strongman in the title? Someone up there with Trump and Putin. And it’s not who you think.