No, this is not the end of the AJHL, nor of the other western Junior A leagues. The junior landscape will shift, as it has always done. There remain lots of questions about where things ultimately settle.
In BC, Merritt has reverted back to Hockey Canada-based Junior A, and there were discussions a couple months back that there are other BCHL teams considering the same move.
But a lot of this has been in the works among the top BCHL clubs for years. Penticton, Salmon Arm and others had discussed breaking away to form their own Super League of sorts, away from Merritt and Powell River and others. The owners are competitive too, so most of those guys would want to try to hang around with the big dogs as long as they can. The open question is how many will and for how long? Money will be the deciding factor, and if the league is truly committed to removing player fees, it's going to be the teams that can fill the rink or rely on other revenue sources that can survive in the long run. So clubs like Pentictor and Salmon Arm and Vernon are going to be fine. Prince George, which makes its nut mostly from its show home lottery, will likely be fine financially, although maybe not competitively (given how challening it will be to recruit players). The lower mainland teams excluding Chilliwack will likely get pared down. I don't know how long the island teams can survive - key resource sector employers in Powell River, Alberni Valley and Cowichan Valley have had significant cutbacks.
Interesting that the KIJHL Summerland Steam is moving to Williams Lake, which kind of opens the door geographically if Prince George decides to leave the BCHL. I know that Quesnel had applied to join the KIJHL and had been rejected, but having Williams Lake, 100 Mile, Quesnel and PG would make a decent 4-team northern division.
There will need to be a decision about who's Junior A and who's Junior B. I'm not sure who decides - will they self-select or will BC Hockey impose the decision. With Merritt's move to the KIJHL, there are now 50 Junior A teams under the BC Hockey banner, which is clearly unsustainable.
The five Alberta teams that have joined the BCHL, good luck to them, but how do they compete in a gate-driven league when they're not drawing 1,000 fans? I could see the corporate sector keeping them viable (does Blackfalds have a corporate sector?) but relying on other people's money if you don't have a market to sell those corporate folks is a risky venture.
As I've said before, there are still a few more shoes to drop. The BCHL teams have decisions to make, the BCHL has decisions to make, the AJHL has decisions to make and the two Hockey Canada branches have decisions to make.