Wearing a sharp three-piece black suit and his hair neatly coiffed, Matthew Cope looks nothing like a laid-back lobster fisherman at the helm of Mystique Lady as he climbs the stairs into the courthouse in Dartmouth, N.S.

Cope would rather be out on the water, where the weight of his legal battle dissipates for a while.

But that’s what landed him in court in the first place. He takes a deep breath and reminds himself whom he’s fighting for.

“I want my children to be able to exercise their rights,” he said. “I want them to be able to work hard and fish and be able to make a living out of it.”

Cope, who is Mi’kmaw, is facing federal charges for doing what Canada’s highest court said he has every right to do: fish for a “moderate livelihood.”

Lobsters sit in a crate on Cope’s fishing v

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