Canadian producers made an impressive showing Thursday as nominations for the 59th annual Emmy Awards were announced and Peter Raymont’s Shake Hands with the Devil and Shaftesbury Films’ The Robber Bride joined the hardware hunt. The Nomadic Pictures copro Broken Trail is up for 16.

Bride‘s Mary-Louise Parker earned a nod in the best actress in a TV miniseries or movie category for her star turn in the CBC and Oxygen TV adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel.

Shaftsbury co-CEO Christina Jennings notes that the prodco already has an International Emmy for Dark Oracle, but says going toe-to-toe with the Americans in their house puts her company in another league.

‘The International Emmys is one thing. But the Emmys is another matter — having us going up against the best of the Americans is very exciting,’ she says.

Oxygen did a marketing blitz to draw the attention of Emmy judges to The Robber Bride. Jennings says she will contact the CBC and Oxygen to consider pumping up Parker’s performance still further ahead of the Sept. 24 Emmy Awards show.

Raymont’s 2005 documentary Shake Hands with the Devil — a portrait of retired Lt-General Roméo Dallaire’s return to Rwanda 10 years after that country’s 1994 genocide — will challenge for an Emmy in the best news and documentary competition.

‘This is a great honor and I hope it will bring more attention to the urgent issues of genocide and human rights violations around the world, which General Dallaire continues to passionately work for,’ says Raymont. The documentary by his White Pine Pictures also aired on the CBC, the U.S. Documentary Channel and in 30 other markets worldwide.

Canada also figures in the HBO TV movie Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which earned 17 nominations after being shot here. Broken Trail — the AMC mini coproduced by Nomadic Pictures in Calgary and U.S.-based Once Upon a Time Films and Butcher’s Run Films — landed 16 noms, including best miniseries and lead actor for Robert Duvall.

Aside from the CBC, rival Canadian broadcasters had to be content with U.S. shows on their schedules earning Emmy stardust.

Pay-TV networks TMN and Movie Central and CTV basked in the afterglow of The Sopranos ending its run with 15 nominations, while CHUM’s Ugly Betty scooped 11 nods, followed by CTV’s Grey’s Anatomy, which grabbed 10.