Old-timers in Canada's small, but obsessively passionate soccer community remember where they were on Sept. 14, 1985.

Like fishing stories, the tales change. They differ from source to source. Everyone claims to remember the game while just a tiny crowd -- around 13,000 -- witnessed Canada's 2-1, World Cup-clinching win over Honduras it in St. John's, Newf.

Among them were a half-dozen reporters who travelled to The Rock that week to cover the last time -- the only time -- Canada qualified for a FIFA World Cup.

Thirty years later -- and with Canada a month away from hosting Honduras in 2018 World Cup qualifying -- one of those reporters, the Toronto Sun's Lance Hornby, remembers being there.

He remembers the screams, the freeze. He remembers being part of one of the greatest, but largely untold moments in Canadian sports history.

"I wasn't even covering soccer," Hornby reminisced. "George Gross, the Toronto Sun's sports editor at the time, asked me at the last minute, 'Would you like to go St. John's?'

"The qualifier was under the radar. It was in the middle of the Blue Jays' pennant drive so nobody was paying attention."

It was 1985. It was soccer. It didn't matter.

The fact the Canadian Soccer Association elected to stage the game in an obscure location didn't help in terms of publicity.

"When the Hondurans arrived it was s a Thursday," Hornby recalled. "They were fish out of water. They'd never seen a place like St. John's."

It was payback for what the Central Americans put Canada through months earlier in Tegucigalpa.

Now customary, Honduras awkwardly staged their home match against Canada around 3 p.m., the hottest time of day. Anything to throw off their competitors from the north.

"Just as much as the jungle was terrible for Canada, this was the worst place to stick the Hondurans," Hornby reaffirmed.

Honduran fans had issues, too. Reports surfaced that some of their faithful turned up in Saint John, NB for for the deciding qualifier only to be told they were in the wrong place.

"Canada wanted to get back at them for staging the game in that condition," Hornby added.

The effects of that decision were obvious from the start. And the weather couldn't have been better for the occasion: "Perfectly" cold and blustery.

"During the national anthems the Hondurans were freezing," Hornby remembered. "The Canadians were in short sleeves and the Hondurans were acting like they were going to the North Pole."

Meanwhile, the Newfies in attendance at King George V Park -- hardly a soccer stadium at the time -- were in fine form.

The environment was intimate, the fans so close to the pitch they were on top of the players.

"They had to bring in bleachers at the last second," Hornby said of the venue. "The people were rowdy.

"It wasn't far from a cemetery. It was like a city park. The location, for Honduras, would have been out of this world."

When George Pakos scored the opener a quarter-hour in it was bedlam. The Canadians were 75 minutes from progression to Mexico 1986, with those in attendance knowing full well they were potentially witnessing history.

All that was threatened after Porfirio Armando Betancourt found an equalizer in the 49th minute before Canada's Igor Vrablic calmed nerves through an eventual game-winner from a corner with under a half-hour remaining.

"Canada never had a moment like that," Hornby said, adding the Canadians belted out O Canada in the locker room post-game.

"You got the feeling you could be part of history. We heard tales pre-game about how the Hondurans stuck it to them down there. It was almost like Team Canada's 1972 hockey team going to Russia.

"The celebration was incredible."

Similar to Team USA's improbable hockey win over the Russians at the 1980 Olympics, Canada's story usually ends there.

The fact Canada failed to score through three losses at Mexico '86 the following summer rarely factors in.

It was about getting Canada to where it had never been, about getting to where it hasn't been since.

About where it isn't likely to return to any time soon.