The town council in Alberton, Ontario, rejected a proposed Native youth group home after residents made racially-charged claims against the project.

Council members deny being motivated by race. They said the project wouldn't fit in zoning requirements in the tiny town of 1,000.

But the director of the Weechi-it-te-win Family Services, the child welfare agency for 10 First Nations, said opposition was based on racism. She said people at a hearing on the project made outrageous claims about the youth that would have been housed there.

'I grew up in this area and never realized the kind of harsh feelings that lay just below the surface," Flinders told The Globe and Mail.

The home was not meant for youth in the juvenile justice system. But a flier distributed around town referred to the project as a "NON-SECURE NATIVE DETENTION CENTRE/GROUP HOME."

“They said the most awful things,”Dorothy Friesen, a supporter of the project, told the Globe and Mail. “They said they’d have to lock their doors now. One person said, ‘I have native friends but this is going too far.’"

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Native group-home proposal sparks racial tension in Ontario town (The Globe and Mail 7/15)