Ed Werenich was nicknamed "the Wrench" because he ratcheted up the pressure on the ice, and often abraded other players and curling officials off the ice.

At age 10, Werenich was introduced to the game, and after finishing high school he moved to Toronto. A rough farm boy in a big city, Werenich eked out a living. But it was in 1972, when he joined up with Paul Savage, that the ice began to run smooth. Savage, raised in suburban Toronto in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood, met his opposite in Werenich. The two often clashed on the ice as teammates, but the levelling surface of the curling ice took them to the Brier in 1973. Werenich played second to Savage’s skip, but it was the reverse that brought them both their first tankard. They lost in 1973 and it took a decade before the pair would return to the Brier with a new rink to taste victory.

In 1983, after years of acrimony between the pair, Savage and Werenich reunited to create what was known as "the Dream Team." Pundits had no doubt as to their abilities; the question was, however, could the rink contain their egos and personalities on one ice surface? Finishing with a 12-1 record, the Ontario squad hoisted the Labatt tankard at the Avonlea Curling Club in Sudbury, Ontario, managing to answer their critics in the process.

That year, Werenich followed his Brier championship with his first world championship. Repeating the victory his idols, the Richardsons, managed over the Scots in 1962, Werenick’s rink took the gold with a victory over the visitors from Scotland at the Agridome in Regina. Seven years later, with a new supporting staff, and in Vasteras, Sweden, Werenich won his second world championship.

Eddie Werenich of Benito, Manitoba. A Footprint in the hack of Canadian sport.