Originally Posted by Jay71

I've taken Harbour Air in the past to get from Vancouver to Victoria for business daytrips. It was kind of interesting but I wouldn't necessarily rate it a must do. The advantage is that it does take you from downtown Vancouver to downtown Victoria (essentially). One thing to keep in mind is that there are a lot of business travellers taking the float planes or heli-jet from Vancouver to Victoria so the early and late flights fill up pretty quick.

Originally Posted by Jay71

It's a nice drive (most of the time) to Whistler. The village is nice and there are lots of good hikes. There's the odd festival and event but they typically aren't compelling enough to make us want to head up.

The drive up has some good viewpoints of the ocean, some waterfalls, etc along the way. As mentioned, construction will likely slow you down or an accident can clog the route to a standstill. If have enough time to do all your must sees in Banff & Jasper with a lot of time to spare, yes, I'd probably recommend heading up along the Sea to Sky highway as your first leg. I haven't crunched the numbers but I'm thinking it'd be a lot of extra hours to go via the Sea to Sky versus just heading east and then up the Coquihalla.