[Tim McGrath]

Yes, the platypus "was loved and honored from the Andes to Estonia,
He soon achieved a pact between Peru and Patagonia"

Your father must be John Lane Bell, the logician, mathematician, and philosopher of science.

While visiting your father in Western Canada, you may have encountered the poetry of Robert W. Service, whose tales of the Klondike are similar in tone and duration to Patrick Barrington's epic

I love high school football, but the Carmelites also provided me with an introduction to theology, which I found highly valuable, and they tried to teach me German, Latin, and Russian.