A Romanian man who tried to sneak into Canada by taking a motorboat on an eight-day journey from Greenland to a High Arctic hamlet has pleaded guilty to immigration charges.

Florin Fodor stands on his small motorboat in Grise Fiord, after making the 1,000-km trip through the ice-filled waters of Baffin Bay.
(Courtesy of Jeffrey Qaunaq)

Florin Fodor, 32, made the plea in Ottawa on Tuesday, more than two months after he arrived by boat in Grise Fiord, a small Inuit settlement on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut.

The RCMP said Fodor was cold and hungry after the treacherous 1,000-kilometre trip through ice-filled waters, but was otherwise in good shape.

Canadian Border Services spokesman Chris Keeley said Fodor was charged with failing to report to officials when he arrived in the hamlet in early September.

He was also charged for entering the country without the permission of Canada's immigration minister because he had been deported before six years earlier.

Grise Fiord is a small Inuit settlement on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut.

Fodor is expected to be sentenced next week, although his lawyer and the Crown could not come to an agreement on what the sentence should involve.

Keeley said the Romanian could face deportation.

Grise Fiord was established by the federal government in the early 1950s to protect Canadian sovereignty.

Inuit families from northern Quebec were relocated there to become its first residents.