To the staccato of blaring horns and cheers from motorists on Ste-Catherine St., students and teachers formed a human chain outside Westmount High School Wednesday morning to protest against Bill 21.

The row of people extended through most of the long block in front of the school, which runs from Dorchester Blvd. to Hillside Lane. About 200 people were at the school for the protest that ran from 8 to 9 a.m., with the start of school delayed from 8:40 to 9:30 a.m.

The teachers said they were standing up for the fundamental rights of their students, which they say the proposed law on state secularism violates.

“As teachers we teach our students not to be silent in the face of bullying. We will not be silent in the face of government bullying,” said science teacher Deborah Fairchild.

Dozens of students were also part of the protest, as well as members of the larger community. Among them was Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, who was wearing a kippa — a Jewish religious head covering traditionally worn by male Jews.

“To me it seems very dangerous when you take people who are fully part of the society who are teachers, who want to be police officers, lawyers and tell them they need to choose between their personal expression of their faith and their career,” said Grushcow, who is the senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Westmount. “I want my children to learn from diversity. I’m not afraid that anyone’s going to be foisting their religious ideas on them.”

Gruscow’s daughter, Alice Myers, was also at the protest and had a poster that read “it’s hard to be a good teacher, so don’t give our teachers more to worry about.”

“Some of my favourite teachers wear religious things on their heads like hijabs and kippas. I don’t want them not to be able to do what they want, where they want, and wear what they want just because of some stupid law,” Myers said.

Furheen Ahmed, who teaches English, history and geography, and wears a hijab, thanked all those who came to protest the law.

“I’m going to be directly affected by this; my daughters might one day be affected by this,” she said. “On behalf of our students, I want to thank everybody. We teach them every day to work hard, to follow their passions and we tell them, ‘you can be everything you want to be,’ so you being here today keeps that statement true, and it’s so important.”

Both the English Montreal School Board and the Lester B. Pearson School Board have vowed not to enforce Bill 21 when it comes into effect. In its current form, the law proposes to ban all new teachers from wearing so-called religious symbols — like a kippa, a hijab or a turban — while maintaining a grandfather clause to exempt all those who currently wear such items. According to La Presse, the Commission scolaire de Montréal said it would study the issue before taking a position on the law.