This guy obviously isn't the brightest light in the harbor:

"The man had gone out in his boat on the Geikie River, which feeds into Wollaston Lake, said Coun. Ed Benoanie of Hatchet Lake Denesuline First Nation.

"But once the man left the river, he couldn't find the passage through the ice that's still on the lake. "There is a way to get home, if you know where you're going, but he didn't know the way, " said Benoanie, noting the man isn't a resident of Wollaston Lake.

Montreal Gazette article

This guy's boat didn't sink. He was just lost.

It sounds like he was too dumb to be where he was, too dumb to be allowed out alone in a boat, too ignorant of local conditions, and too stupid to use his axe to cut wood to start a fire, or three fires, which could be seen from the air and reported.

Instead, he did the most destructive thing he could do to get attention. Short of setting his own boat on fire, of course, which would have been less work, but more costly to him personally, which he obviously wasn't of a mind to do.

Sue