One of the best things about the internet is that you can go to the website of most of the products including electronics sold in the last 10 or 15 years, and download the manuals. Look for support or download, or search for manuals and you can usually find what you need. For instance the manual for your VCR can be found at http://electrohome.ca/electrohome/en/support/index?page=manuals (copy and paste)
Remote manuals are a bit harder as it is much harder to figure out who made them but at worst case there is a company called 2Instructions with several URLs under different names that sell manuals. I don't know the cost.