The Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League is a Canadian junior ice hockey

Ice hockey

Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...

 league based in Southern Ontario

Southern Ontario

Southern Ontario is a region of the province of Ontario, Canada that lies south of the French River and Algonquin Park. Depending on the inclusion of the Parry Sound and Muskoka districts, its surface area would cover between 14 to 15% of the province. It is the southernmost region of...

, Canada. The league is sanctioned by the Ontario Hockey Association

Ontario Hockey Association

The Ontario Hockey Association is the governing body for the majority of Junior and Senior level ice hockey teams in the Province of Ontario. The OHA is sanctioned by the Ontario Hockey Federation along with the Northern Ontario Hockey Association. Other Ontario sanctioning bodies along with the...

, Ontario Hockey Federation

Ontario Hockey Federation

The Ontario Hockey Federation is the governing body of all sanctioned ice hockey in the province of Ontario in Canada, except for those portions governed by Hockey Northwestern Ontario and the Ottawa District Hockey Association...

, and Hockey Canada

Hockey Canada

Hockey Canada, formally known as the Canadian Hockey Association, is the national governing body of ice hockey in Canada and is a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation. Hockey Canada controls a vast majority of ice hockey in Canada, with a few exceptions...

. The league was created in 2007 through the merging of the Western Ontario Hockey League, Mid-Western Junior Hockey League, and Golden Horseshoe Junior Hockey League to dissuade "player raiding" from teams in the Ontario Provincial Junior A Hockey League

Ontario Provincial Junior A Hockey League

The Ontario Junior Hockey League is a Junior A ice hockey league under the supervision of the Ontario Hockey Association and the Canadian Junior Hockey League. The league dates back to 1954 as the Central Junior B Hockey League. In 1993, the Central Junior B Hockey League was promoted to the...

.

The twenty-six teams of the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League come from Southwestern Ontario

Southwestern Ontario

Southwestern Ontario is a subregion of Southern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario, centred on the city of London. It extends north to south from the Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron to the Lake Erie shoreline, and east to south-west roughly from Guelph to Windsor. The region had a population...

, the Golden Horseshoe

Golden Horseshoe

The Golden Horseshoe is a densely populated and industrialized region centred around the Greater Toronto Area at the western end of Lake Ontario in Southern Ontario, Canada, with outer boundaries stretching south to Lake Erie and north to Georgian Bay. Most of it is also part of the Quebec City...

, and include one team from upstate New York.
In the late 1990s, the Western Ontario Junior B Hockey League began complaining about their top level players being pulled from their teams at trade deadline time by Ontario Provincial Junior A Hockey League

Ontario Provincial Junior A Hockey League

The Ontario Junior Hockey League is a Junior A ice hockey league under the supervision of the Ontario Hockey Association and the Canadian Junior Hockey League. The league dates back to 1954 as the Central Junior B Hockey League. In 1993, the Central Junior B Hockey League was promoted to the...

 clubs without permission or compensation.