Yes, something like that almost happened to me on a visit to KY Lake. I was in a sheltered medium-small bay with modest wave height and wind, but some idiots racing by forced me to turn into their wakes, and at the same time the wind came up, pushing me “crosswise” into the main lake where now I had large waves coming at me from two directions. I did have on my life jacket, but hoo, boy, that wasn’t fun at all...
My experience was more instructive than dangerous. We started off paddling downstream. There was a strong current and that was fun. Getting back though ... well, the Ohio River is bigger and stronger than we were. So there we were: two intrepid Boy Scout types, pretty canoe savvy but mostly on smaller creeks and rivers, paddling furiously and going backwards. We finally figured out that if we stuck as close as possible to the shore, the current was much slower. We still had to work at it though. Had it come to it, we could have beached the canoe and walked back, but that would have involved serious loss of face.
I have learned to respect flowing water.