This, of course, misconceives the job description of historians.* The job of historians is not to be cheerleaders for the country. Their job, as far as I can tell, is to understand the past--what has happened, why it has happened. That's it. What do they focus on? Mostly that depends on the curiosity of individual historians, but, of course, there are systemic dynamics: what gets funding, what kinds of stuff department desire in the next generation of job candidates (as if there are tenure track positions for historians these days), and so forth.
The idea that all historians are doing niche stuff focusing on the historical plight of women, of ethnic groups, of Indigenous people is mostly confirmation bias run amok. That is, folks notice the history focused on those who have mostly been left out of the histories, and they don't notice the standard historical work focused on the Canadian government, the men (yes, conventional histories focus on the dudes) who led the country, and so forth. It is apparently the case that there are few spots in history departments for military historians and diplomatic historians. Still, there is all kinds of history being done, but folks tend to focus on the stuff that they see as strange. Well, there's a reason for that--historically excluded groups tend to be excluded from the histories, so when they are the focus, that is new and different. And folks tend to get freaked out by that which is different.
So, part of this is that history as a field is trying to catch up and cover the history that has been mostly omitted (one way to do original research is to study that which is understudied). And that will mean bad news--that is, the history of excluded groups is going to be a history of exclusion and discrimination. Which might not make white straight men feel good--that the folks who held the monopoly of power may not feel great about being reminded how they ruled. Too bad, so sad. Again, the job of historians is to figure out what happened, and that often means discussing bad stuff.
This tendency to think that historians should be telling Canadians stuff that makes them feel good is not that different from how many of our government partners think that the job of academia is to help them tell their story. Nope, our job is to foster better understanding, which is not always a good news story.
* I am not an historian, and historians probably dislike much of my work for not going back far enough or for not relying more on primary documents. But when I see an academic field near mine be wildly mischaracterized/understand, I spew.
