Toronto, Canada🇨🇦25 Years Later: Finding The ‘High School Wall’ Where Don’t Stop Living🌎👨‍💻💻 ALL Began

“DON’T STOP LIVING” – High School Graffiti in Toronto, Canada (September 2001).

I’ve told this story quite a lot down the years, but things get missed and overlooked that it merits a post of its own, especially now that life finally went fool circle (not full circle) as I finally went back to the “High School Wall” in Toronto, Canada – the Highs School Wall where Don’t Stop Living all began. 25 years after 2001 and 19 years after 2007. This was now July 2026 and I felt ancient!

“There goes the fear, there it goes. You turn around and life has passed you by” – Doves.

When Did “Don’t Stop Living” Start?

In August 2001, I was in Toronto, Canada. I was there with my family – Granny Mary, Mum, Dad, brothers Daniel and Marko and sister Cathy. We had about 4 days in Toronto, 2 days in Niagara and 3 days in Winnipeg. The point of the trip was to visit Winnipeg for cousin Alison’s wedding. The flights were Belfast to Toronto (direct) on Air Canada, then we went to the Days Inn on Carlton Street. There aren’t many photos from that trip, but some exist, below here…

On that trip, I was a dreamer, a novice, a writer (paper and pen into notebooks) and I worked in the stock control department at Tesco in Springhill, Bangor. Life was rather mundane and Toronto away was a wild trip that provided inspiration for me. I wasn’t even a proper backpacker back then. I had a backpack but I also had a suitcase (the suitcase would be ditched forever by the end of the decade) and I wasn’t backpacking in hostels. We had booked a room in the Days Inn on Carlton Street.

While that trip came to an end – Winnipeg, Niagara, Toronto were over fast and we all returned to Northern Ireland. I hadn’t pondered on the “Don’t Stop Living” wall.

The Don’t Stop Living Wall

“Another brick in the wall” – Pink Floyd.

As has been documented before on here and on the DSL Bakebook page, the quote “Don’t Stop Living” was stolen from a High School Wall somewhere between Queen’s Park, Wellesley Street and Yonge Street. Back in 2001 my mind was hazy, we had no Facebook, YouTube, Smartphones or Social Media. Back then, I didn’t even have an email address, had never used Google and wasn’t even travelling with ANY kind of phone. I had a wind-on camera with 24 exposures max. But at some point on that trip, I ended up on Wellesley Street West.

But the wall existed, even though I backpacked it without a camera. My sister Cathy was actually walking with me that day, though I am not sure she will remember the graffiti or the significance of it. As soon as I spied the graffiti, I thought “what a quote, what a motto!”. In my life I have always borrowed inspiration from any and many sources. Everything can be an inspiration or something to change your life. I took out my jotter/notebook from my backpack and wrote the quote down.

“Even the lad in the butcher’s shop man, he can be rock’n’roll” – Liam Gallagher.

I turned the quote “Don’t Stop Living” into a poem, lyric and song but didn’t dwell on it. Life went back to porridge, mundanity and boredom whence I landed back in Northern Ireland. To all intents and purposes, “Don’t Stop Living” was stagnant.

Don’t Stop Living 2001 – 2007

For 6 years I had kept the “Don’t Stop Living” catchphrase rather silent and stagnant. I had lived in Bournemouth, Poole, Dartford and London (all in England) in the meantime and life had changed somewhat. I’d ocassionally jot the phrase up on a wall at university or speak it during my then “Jonny Blair on the air” radio show but in general, it was a mere poem, one of thousands of poems I had written, with little afterthought. I moved to London in July 2006 for a high flying job with Bite Communications. I worked in a busy office in London doing PR.

I both loved it; and hated it. I loved the glamour, the pride, the busy work ethic, the office banter, the boast (“I do PR for Apple and Sonos”), the perks (“Thirsty Thursdays”) and my workmates. I hated the money (I earned about £900 a MONTH, which is atrocious when living in London), I hated the long hours, the fakeness (pretending to love Apple when all of their products kept breaking), the chasing clients, the chasing journalists. I left on a high though…

On the 30th June 2007, I quit my high flying PR job, never to return.

Toronto, Canada for £99 in July 2007

1st July 2007, I headed to Toronto Canada on the start of a backpacking world tour, where I’d visit China, Russia and New Zealand for the first time before overland backpacking through Europe from Belarus to Paris before a flight back to Belfast. That world tour all began, rather significantly and life changingly, in Toronto Canda. On Canada Day!

By way of working in PR, I had become aware of a special £99 deal from Canadian Affair – direct flight Heathrow to Toronto (one way) for £99 so I booked it. From there, I’d book a few more flights through USA and New Zealand to wind up in China.

Canada was about to change my life and “Don’t Stop Living” was about to have a wild second wind…

The Don’t Stop Living Travel Blog

While staying at the Planet Traveler Hostel in Toronto in July 2007, I met two English backpackers, Mike Burkimsher and Lee Price, who both had travel blogs – The Long Way Home / Ball Of Dirt (Mike) and One World (Lee). Until then, I had never even heard of travel blogging.

Seeing them publish their journeys inspired me to transfer my handwritten travel notes onto the internet. Choosing the name was easy at that point – the name “Don’t Stop Living” actually predates the blog of course. During an earlier visit to Toronto in 2001, as I wrote, I saw the words “DON’T STOP LIVING” spray-painted/graffitied in red on a high school wall. The phrase stayed with me, I wrote it in my travel notebook, and adopted it as a personal motto. When I needed a name for this travel blog six years later, it became the obvious choice. Weirdly, Lee and Mike’s blogs are now OFFLINE – they don’t exist. I find that so odd that the two travel bloggers that inspired me and told me to do this are no longer active, while Don’t Stop Living is MASSIVE now – 5,000+ blog posts, 240+ countries and 19 years old now.

“Let’s say we up and left this town and turned our future upside down. This is massive” – Crowded House.

I previously defined the “Don’t Stop Living” phrase as:

“To live every day with fulfilment and joy, just in case it’s your last. Live life to the maximum.”

The blog was all about showing my life to the world and hoping others would follow it. I didn’t expect the blog to go professional, pay for my travels and supply me with a lifestyle of travel whereby I didn’t need to work in farms, bars, schools or offices anymore. It was a long road though…

Early DSL Days – The First Posts

Although I drafted the first blog articles in July 2007, I wasn’t particularly technical/tech savvy, and so I initially typed them as unsent emails (or sent to myself) or simple documents before figuring out how blogging worked. The site officially went live on 27th August 2007, when I published the first post, “Welcome to Don’t Stop Living.” The original blog was hosted by Blogspot, then WordPress, then Cloudflare. The original blog looks rather primitive now though I am currently unhappy with the current platform – still not tech savvy enough to make it better!

The first five published posts were also basic, and linked to my 2007 backpacking tour through Canada, USA then New Zealand:

1. Welcome to Don’t Stop Living
2. Stepping Stones to Canada: Toronto
3. New York: Empire State Halo
4. What the Hell Am I Doing Drinking in LA at 27?
5. Auckland: Dust from a Distant Sun

“All free soulds beware, a moon is in my head” – Ian McCullough.

Don’t Stop Living: From Hobby to Career

For the first few years, the blog was simply a way to keep friends and family updated while travelling. Around 2012, I realised it could become a business after the site had built a substantial readership and I had received emails from advertisers (Destinia and Expedia were my first clients!). I moved to a self-hosted WordPress site and eventually made travel blogging my full-time profession.

Don’t Stop Living In Summary

In short, the Don’t Stop Living blog was born from four key moments:

• Quitting a PR career to backpack the world in 2007 (London to Toronto and beyond).
• Meeting two travel bloggers in a Toronto hostel who inspired the idea in 2007 (in Toronto).
• Using years of handwritten travel diaries as the basis for online stories 1986 – 2007.
• Naming it after a piece of graffiti I had seen in Toronto in 2001 that became my life motto (in Toronto).

So Toronto was the city where it all began, TWICE. Finally in 2026, I was back, 25 years after the Don’t Stop Living wall sighting and 19 years after Don’t Stop Living travel blog began. After backpacking The Republic Of Rathnelly and The Barony Of Caux, I headed to Wellesley Street West to find the exact wall where Don’t Stop Living all began…

“Another turning point; a fork stuck in the road” – Green Day.

My 2026 Walk: Queen’s Park To Yonge Street Via Wellesley Street West

It had stuck in my mind that the graffiti was somewhere on Wellesley Street, and particularly Wellesley Street West. So I backpacked it loyal. I started at Queen’s Park and here was the start of my walk. After checking a freedom memorial, I found Saint Joseph’s College…

Saint Joseph’s College School, Wellesley Street West

This was it. This was 100% it. This was the College! This was the High School! This is where the graffiti was, 25 years ago. There just didn’t seem to be an obvious wall with grafitti here, and here in 2026, it had a fence outside it.

Saint Joseph’s College School Facebook

Saint Joseph’s College School Website

But this was the school, this was it. It was called “Saint Joseph’s College School”! Ironic as my Dad Joe’s original name was Joseph!!

I took some selfies, let this 25 year journey sink in and then I realised my own red herring – the “High School Wall” was actually a wall in the address next door – at 62 Wellesley Street – an office block.

Just after finding the school and walking to the wall, there was a lot of art on the fence. I took some photos of that and looked for the words “Don’t Stop Living” but they weren’t there.

Red Herring: The High School Wall Is NOT A High School Wall

The mind plays tricks sometimes. Things you thought happened, sometimes didn’t. They were a figment and a pigment of your imagination…the maps below show EXACTLY where the Don’t Stop Living wall is. It was at 62 Wellesley Street West on the address NEXT to the High School.

62 Wellesley Street West – The Don’t Stop Living Wall

62 Wellesley Street West is the wall where the graffit in red spray paint read “DON’T STOP LIVING”, it is the next number along after Saint Joseph’s College School. I don’t have many regrets in life but I REALLY REALLY WISHED I had taken a photo in 2001 of the Don’t Stop Living graffiti on that wall. Instead, here in 2026, I actually turned to AI (Chat GPT) to fakepack my 2001 Don’t Stop Living wall…

There was also a wall underneath at 62 Wellesley Street West, that I considered could also have been the Don’t Stop Living Wall (below) but instinct told me not. Plus this building might have been knocked down and rebuilt. Who knew?

And without further ado, that was it. I headed to Mick E Fynn’s Pub on Carlton Street for a pint of HARP, which is exactly what I did 25 years earlier when I came from the Don’t Stop Living wall. Life had truly gone fool circle.

Don’t Stop Living!

Here are some videos of my 2026 trip back to the Don’t Stop Living wall: