As I am more familiar with tkinter than Qt, is it possible to have a tkinter frame populate with a C++ application to enable the manipulation of visio files.  The end result would hopefully be to have a portable .exe that would connect to an access database for line item tracking, and the Visio "canvas" to manipulate visual layouts of work spaces.
I am very new to programming, and learning as I go...
I don't think you can embed ActiveX controls like the one provided by Visio (it's probably what you refer to as "visio canvas") in tkinter. Even with Qt, this may be not that straightforward.
The second thing is, "visio canvas" won't work without Visio installed - not sure if that's okay with you. Means, your users first would have to install Visio (and provide a license) and then your .exe which uses Visio as "canvas".
If you want a sand-alone exe, I would recommend you to use whatever is available in your framework instead of Visio.
C++ "canvas" inside of tkinter frame to manipulate MS visio files