She Bought Land In Small Town Ontario. A Township Made It a Fight for Her Life.

It was a dream come true to buy land in the same area where she went to church camp as a child. The plan was to build a mixed-use retreat offering agriculture, recreation, and accommodations, next to the Edenvale Aerodrome.

“My background [is] in hospitality,” Williams explained. “I love what I do, and I wanted to create a space out there. When the opportunity came to acquire, I was like, this feels full circle.”

The property’s previous owner had a contentious relationship with the Township because of a failed 2019 music festival, leaving more than $78,000 in unpaid bills. Williams had no connection to the festival or the former owner, so she didn’t expect any problems.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

With high hopes of creating a friendly business relationship in her new community, Williams was surprised to encounter resistance and delays when she began initiating discussions with Township staff. “I was like, I'm a new owner. I have this really wonderful idea… I was wrong. They would not meet with me,” she said, describing her repeated attempts to obtain a pre-consultation meeting.

Frustrated by the lack of progress, Williams contacted her neighbour, the owner of the Edenvale Aerodrome, for advice on the Township staff. “He expressed to me that he doesn't go to the mayor, the mayor comes to him.” Williams’ neighbour told her he would meet with the mayor and speak to him on her behalf. 

After the aerodrome’s owner met with the mayor, he gave Williams the Township’s Chief Administrative Officer’s phone number, and they connected for a meeting.

The CAO was positive and expressed his support of Williams' plans to develop the property. However, the Township's Planning Department continued to discourage Williams from pursuing the pre-consultation meeting, saying they didn’t want her to waste her time and money. The cost of the meeting? Two hundred dollars. 

“This property is $4.2 million,” Williams said. “At that point, I had already spent several thousand dollars to get [independent] planners engaged and to have them do their research and figure out how to get to the finish line.”

One of the independent planners Williams engaged - a Black man from a Toronto-based land development firm - also struggled to communicate with the Township planning department. “They would not return his phone calls or emails but would engage his white assistant.”

Raymond C. McMillan is the founder of The McMillan Group, with experience in brokerage, lending, and real estate investment across Canada, the U.S., and the Caribbean since 1999. “I get the sense that they don't want her there. When you leave Golden Horseshoe and most urban areas of Ontario, life gets very, very different,” he shared after hearing some of Williams’ story. “In some remote areas, where you've got these very small communities, a lot of times they're very reluctant to outside intrusion, for the lack of a better word.”

While Williams won’t say that being a Black woman in a predominantly white area was why the Township was unhelpful, she can’t say that it wasn’t. That’s the difficulty in sharing this story, explained Williams. “I realized there are so many times throughout this experience where I talked myself out of what my gut was telling me was happening,” she explained.

And it only got worse.

In early 2023. Williams received an email from her lender's attorney saying that she was in default of her mortgage.

Remember the failed music festival that was on the property Williams now owns? The County contacted her lender about the outstanding bills, leading to mortgage enforcement proceedings. “The county's lawyer contacted my lender to say that the Township has rights to my land, and therefore, I do not have rights to my land,” she explained. “I'm now in default of my mortgage because the Township has interest in my property.”

Knowing of Williams’ problems with the Township, her ‘helpful’ neighbour, the owner of the Edenvale aerodrome, went behind her back to her mortgage lender. “He essentially went to the lender and said, ‘Yeah, sell it to me for what her debt is,’” explains Williams. 

According to the legal documents, the mortgage lender tried to sell Williams’ property to the aerodrome owner for $1.9 million, well below its $4.2 million appraised value. McMillan balked at this. If there were outstanding bills or liens on the property, the sale shouldn’t have gone through. “You can't buy a property, do all the searches and close the deal, take possession, then have debt from a previous owner.”

Williams was told that a lien search had been done and all was clear. She and the property vendor used the same law firm to close the transaction. But this can be problematic, says McMillan. 

“[Some] clients say, Oh, we're going to use one lawyer to cut costs. Now, the lawyer that they tend to use most often is the vendor's lawyer. That person doesn't usually have your best interest as the purchaser,” he explained. “A lot of times, clients will say, ‘Okay, we're going to save a $1,000 in legal fees.’ And I always tell clients, that the $1,000 you're saving could become a $100,000 nightmare.” 

Williams continued to face demands and accusations, including claims that she removed millions of dollars' worth of trees on her property. “Mind you, at this point, I haven't even plucked a blade of grass from this property.” 

After a prolonged lawsuit, the Township backed off. “They had created such a mess of things that now my mortgage was due to be renewed, but we had spent a year - and all of my money - battling them. My lender was like, ‘Hey, this is messy. I want out.’ Now, how do I, in the midst of all this, find a new lender? I experienced unbelievable financial hardship.”

Rules for one, barriers for another

In 2024, Williams decided to erect a privacy berm to shield the property from the aerodrome’s noise and truck traffic. In sworn court materials, Williams states that the mayor advised her multiple times that no fill permit was required. His advice was consistent with how the aerodrome was treated. But the Township disagreed and ordered work to stop immediately. 

According to legal documents, the neighbour who owned the aerodrome was allowed to import millions of cubic metres of fill since 2018 without a permit. Whereas Williams submitted a complete application in November 2024, including engineering drawings, agency correspondence, and fees. 

The review process was months-long and required multiple peer reviewers, amended drawings, a 382-page Fill Management Plan, and reports from consultants, including an aviation consultant and a letter from NAV CANADA stating that the berm posed no issues to Williams’ neighbour’s aviation operations. 

Still, approval didn’t come.

“First off, this is an unnecessary exercise because I'm not required to do this by law,” Williams said. “The Township comes back and says to me, ‘we don't understand what [the aviation consultant] is saying. Not even our own consultants understand what this person is saying.’ The CAO says to me that they want me to go and ask my neighbour if it's okay for me to build this berm.”

From intimidation to violence

According to Williams, the harassment escalated in Spring 2024 when she was on the property with a potential business partner, his son, and her parents. They noticed a small plane, flying low, coming towards them.

“I'm thinking to myself, ‘OK, well, it is an airport next door.’ The party that I was with was like, ‘Angelina, that plane's flying really low.’ My dad's like, ‘Yeah, he's coming really low, Angelina.’ We all ducked as the plane was maybe 10 feet above our heads,” she recounted. “Everyone's shaken now. I'm like, ‘What the heck just happened?’”

Moments later, a young woman approached the unsettled group saying, they shouldn’t be there. Williams was incredulous—she was on her property. “[The woman] goes, ‘Well, I'm just letting you know you shouldn't be here. It's not safe for you. She gets in her car and drives away. [I’m] just trying to keep calm because my focus is I gotta save this property. I gotta bring some money, and I gotta figure out how to maintain ownership of this property.” 

Everything came to a head in August 2025, when a contractor working on Williams’ property called her shortly after 9 a.m. “He’s screaming, ‘Oh, my God, Angelina, they shot me! They shot me! They effing shot me!’ And I'm like, ‘What? Who shot you?’” 

Williams’ contractor was on the property when strangers drove up to him. After confronting them, he turned to leave, and three shots were fired from the car, hitting the contractor in his leg. "When the OPP let me know they are considering an attempted murder [charge] and that I was a potential target, I was like, ‘Oh, what's happening to my world?’ ... I have done nothing to no one, and this is the result: attempted murder."

Court records confirm the shooting and state that the Ontario Provincial Police are investigating the incident as an attempted murder. Due to the ongoing investigation, Williams has limited her comments.

But the harassment didn’t stop. 

Within a week of the shooting, Township crews removed culverts at the four entrances to her property, effectively blocking all access. Williams’ lawyer later advised the Township that the action was illegal, and access was partially restored.

In her affidavit, Williams states that she believes her treatment by the Township reflects preferential enforcement in favour of a longtime local property owner and that, as a Black woman and newcomer to the community, she felt unwelcome. These allegations are before the court and have not been tested at trial.

“I fought like hell.”

A proud Canadian of Jamaican descent and the eldest child and grandchild in her family, Williams’ goal was to create a space in service of her people. But the experience has taken a profound toll and left her with feelings of shame and fear. At this point, she’s still processing the mental, emotional, and physical harm she’s experiencing. It has changed how she thinks about achieving her dream of a retreat in the country.

“One of the most toxic things that has played in my mind is, who the f--k did I think I am? I hate that that has been the thought, because if anyone were to say that to me previously, [I’d say] I'm Angelina Williams - ask somebody about me. But this was like, ‘You're such an idiot. Why did you do this?”

Now, when work is done on the property in Clearview, white men take the lead - Williams doesn’t want to be visible. “I didn't expect that to show up as a trauma response. I'm literally afraid to leave my home.”

It’s a cautionary tale from McMillan’s perspective, as someone who has seen similar situations during his more than 25-year career in mortgages and real estate. “I've always cautioned my clients against those decisions. Those communities are very small, most of them are less than 20,000 people, sometimes even less than 5,000 people. They all know each other. They’ve all gone to the same church. It's an intergenerational community. And coming in as a Black person or a migrant into those environments is usually not the most pleasant experience.” 

In February 2026, the court ruled in favour of Williams, allowing her to continue construction of the berm. The court found that Williams had met all the by-law requirements and the Township shouldn’t have withheld the permit. By requiring the aviation safety and flight-path information, all of which fall under federal jurisdiction, not municipal, the Township exceeded its authority. 

But this doesn’t feel like a victory, because the Township says it intends to appeal the judge’s decision, and won't give Williams the permit.

As the justice system continues to churn along, Williams wants to tell her story to protect herself. 

“If they do something to me, I need people to know that I fought like hell,” she said. “I don't think that working towards [your] dreams should be this difficult. It shouldn't be a question of life and death.”